“COOLINARY YOUTH” – PROJECT HOSTED IN CROATIA
‘’Coolinary youth’’ that’s the name of a wonderful project to which Lucia,Giovanni and myself (Francsco) had the opportunity to be involved in, thanks to the partnership with EUROSUD NGO. The project was hosted in Croatia in the small and charming city of Samobor, which offered the perfect location for youngsters from Spain,Slovakia,Turkey,Croatia and Italy to gather and learn from each other about Gastronomy,food traditions and cultural differences between countries. During the mobility we had the opportunity to know better the other participants and to create bounds with them, also we experienced through the activities how gastronomy can differentiate us and at the same time unite us. We got to try different foods from every country and we learned about the storytelling which is behind every dish. During the day we played games as a learning tool and we also visited surprising places like the cookies fabric of samobor or the local market and besides the daily activities we had cultural nights, the best occasions to have fun and get to know the others. It was very inspiring and exciting, an experience that we all wish to repeat. Unfortunately as everything in this world it had to come to an end but the relationships created between participants during the project will survive and continue also after this experience. We thanks EUROSUD for this amazing opportunity and we look forward with eager eyes for the next adventure.
Lucia G. Giovanni G. Francesco R.
THE YOUTH EXCHANGE “COOLINARY YOUTH” IN SAMOBOR, CROATIA
The Youth Exchange Coolinary Youth took place in Samobor, Croatia from 7th to 15th of September.
All the activities regarding the gastronomy and different cuisines were aimed at comparing and relate to other countries’ way of think about food and act around it. We had the opportunity to reflect on our own relationship with the act of fetch food, preparing and eat it, and to the thoughts and emotions that are connected to this process. Every night we had the possibility to discover each countries’ way of eating and sharing food, with the intercultural nights. On top of that, the workshops held during the different days gave us some insights on local recipes coming from all the cultures participating in the exchange. It was really enriching to see how each recipe had some similarities and some differences with known plates from every country, and to discuss about those differences in a constructive way. Especially the discussion about pastries made clear to all of us that the differences were there for everyone to see, but it only took us to scrape the surface to find much more similarities than we expected.
Even if in the beginning the schedule seemed a little too loose, with a lot of free time and some repeated activities, things began to change after we addressed the first few days of sessions about local differences.
The thing we appreciated the most was the possibility to come up with suggestions and new ideas, and how the flexibility of the program allowed to make variations and include different kind of activities: for example, one day we personally took care of an educational game about nutrition. Another time we suggested to address a topic that was not contemplated in the original project, food waste, and we dedicated an afternoon to watch a documentary and discuss about it. Everyone in the exchange was willing to participate in the discussion and to share their own experience, as well as think about other new activities to propose to the coordinator.
One day we had the possibility to visit the Arko Gingerbread and candle making handicraft, located in Samobor, where we learnt how to decorate the “Licitar”, some traditional cookies made to be exposed at Christmas.
We could make many more examples, but we could never express how each one of the Erasmus+ experiences has its unique way to put you outside of your comfort zone and teach you something you would never have expected.
THE YOUTH EXCHANGE: “SPORT TO COMBAT VIOLENCE AND CYBERBULLYING”
The Youth Exchange “Sport to combat violence and cyberbullying” has been going on since 1st of September in Pompei, Italy and will continue until 9th of September🏃🏽
Participants from Italy🇮🇹, Spain🇪🇸, Romania🇹🇩, Latvia🇱🇻 and U.K.🇬🇧 will during the following days focus on how sport can combat violence and cyberbullying through workshops and discussions. They will be familiar with terms within the topic and also perform each countries’ national sports.
During the past three days the participants have got to know each other through team building and name games. They have been introduced to the topic and learnt more about Erasmus+ program and other opportunities that young people get through it. 🇪🇺
The participants have defined terms as discrimination, stereotypes, prejudice, violence and also about the differences between hate speech and freedom of speech.
The first night started of with an Italian night full of Italian culture such as food, music, and games🇮🇹🍕🍝
#Youth #YouthExchange #Erasmusplus #ActiveYouthForEurope #Sporttocombatviolenceandcyberbullying #ANG #morethananassosiacion
#EUROSUDSTORIES: YOUTH INTO BUSINESS, 20 -25 January 2020 , Târgu Jiu
We are Chiara, Giulia and Virginia. Thanks to the EUROSUD NGO we had the opportunity to take part in the Erasmus+ Training Course “Youth into Business”, an interesting activity organized by CECIS Romania NGO in Târgu Jiu, from 20 to 25 January 2020.
The main aim of this project was to train youth workers for developing the skills and knowledge to support youngsters self-employment.
First we identified barriers to entrepreneurship in disadvantaged youngsters. Then we analyzed local markets, the needs of youth target group, service providers in local community and services provided by youth organizations in entrepreneurship field. We also developed skills in identifying and meeting disadvantaged youngsters’ needs for additional training as part of life skills training approach in an entrepreneurship program. It was really interesting to learn financing aims to develop our knowledge about variety of financing options that can be accessed by young entrepreneurs.
As already experienced in previous Erasmus+ projects, it was inspiring to learn about other cultures and, specifically for this project, it was very useful to discover trends about entrepreneurial culture in the partner countries in a creative and open manner.
There aren’t proper words to describe Erasmus+. For discovering how it works you must live by yourself this amazing experience.
#EUROSUDSTORIES: GET IN! INCLUSION OF YOUNGSTERS IN COMMUNITY LIFE, 6th-12th February, Łòdź, Poland
We had the opportunity, from 6th to 12th February 2020 in Łòdź (Poland), to take part in this evaluation seminar that was just a small part of a wider, international project lasting 18 months, aimed at establishing and developing two community centres to support youngsters from rural areas in Moldova (Costuleni) and Armenia (Darbas), with a special eye on social inclusion for youth who need to find their place in the society.
In this stage of the project, hosted by the Europejska Fundacja Rozwoju Człowieka, there were 24 partcipants from Poland, Italy, Armenia and Moldova.
As this was the first experience for three of our national group, we can definitely say that his seminar was interesting, inspiring in some ways, sometimes a bit challenging when we had to make plans for the development of the youth centres we focused on.
We were nicely welcomed by the hosting team and thanks to the energizers, the games and the first activities made to break the ice among the participants, we could feel a good atmosphere in the whole group, since we had no difficulties at mingling with the participants from other nations.
There were, spread throughout the days of the seminar, many brainstorming group activities that aimed at creating a plan of start and development of youth centres, focusing especially on the existing centres of Darbas (Armenia) and Costuleni (Moldova). We were brought from the hosting organization to different topics that had to be considered in the features and the activities of the youth centres, such as social inclusion, education, training, entertainment, fundraising, administration of the centres and so on. It was interesting, during these activities, to know a bit more about Poland, Moldova and Armenia and to learn from people with completely different social and cultural backgrounds.
We had also a very nice intercultural evening, when every national team presented the typical food and drinks of their own nation: literally everything tasted very good!
In addition to this, we had the opportunity of trying Polish cuisine, very different from ours but very good too.
A very particular activity that has to be mentioned is the theatre play about social inclusion: it was inspiring, well organized and the storyline very detailed.
Another very interesting activity we did was the treasure hunt in Łòdź. We were split into two big teams and we had to stop and take pictures of the many murals and statues in the city. The city is big and many sites are under construction, so it could look a bit plain, but there are many marvelous murals that give to the city a peculiar feature of a mix of art and urban development.
During the last days we managed, in two big groups, to give a quite detailed plan of development of the youth centres, which was fruit of the labor of the whole groups and the ongoing evaluation of the teams and the trainers.
Surely we could learn from experts of strategy planning and their own backgrounds and experiences on the field.
It was, at first, quite difficult to understand every step of the group plan, but in the end we all managed to bring in our ideas and advices in order to give our contribution to the development of the youth centres and this was satisfactory for us: we felt useful and maybe, who knows, many youth from Armenia and Moldova will benefit from the work of us all.
In conclusion, we can say that this was a nice, particular experience that enriched us all and gave us a wider perspective on what youth work is.
We thank Eurosud for the work they have done throughout all this project and possibility they have given us to participate to this seminar and we also thank Europejska Fundacja Rozwoju Człowieka, AVI Moldova and ArmActive for their work and contribution to this and all the other stages of the GetIn project.
Emiliano, Fulvia, Giovanna, Marco, Matilde and Stefano (Italy)
#EUROSUDSTORIES: “FEELING FACTORY”: A POSSIBLE ESCAPE FROM DISCRIMINATION- CZECH REPUBLIC
The “feeling factory” training course took place from 30 November to 8 December in Kolin, Czech Republic, which involved 8 different countries. The main theme was the diffusion and promotion of Human Rights through the fight against discrimination, with particular regard to xenophobia, domestic violence and racial discrimination. From the outset, an informal approach was used to laid the foundations to know each other’s, immediately creating an atmosphere of collaboration and exchange of ideas and experiences. The training course was structured through a series of dynamic activities, group work, role-playing and creative workshop that laid the basis and provide us with functional tools to achieve the final goal: the creation of three escape rooms based on human rights violations. The structure to create the escape rooms was based to convey to the player the same sensations experienced by the victims of these important violations of human rights. At an educational level, the basic idea is that by practicing the concepts that you want transmit to the people learning is more direct.
Moreover, learning through playing make the process of acquiring information easier. All of this was possible thanks to a well-structured work of our trainers, who initially involved us in activities aimed at create moments of dialogue about Human Rights which have encouraged the exchange of ideas and visions of the world between people which different socio-cultural backgrounds. Then, also for us, was the time to learn through practice and we spent a wonderful day in Prague, where we played to several escape rooms. In the last part of this training course we carried out activities to learn how to create puzzles and to learn theoretically how to build an escape room. Through daily commitment, the creation of an atmosphere of trust, putting oneself at stake, we have succeeded in the final objective: opening to the public the three different escape rooms designed by 3 group and based on real stories of discrimination. Working hard and daily, a game, that has now expanded widely, has become a new constructive experience within everyone’s reach, a “game” in which we are all called to participate: the fight against prejudices, stereotypes and discrimination. At personal
level, it was an experience that enriched us a lot, for us it was the first time with European programs like this and we didn’t know what await us. Now, it is possible to say that reality has exceeded our expectations. Human relationships establishes and the moments of dialogue created led us to test ourselves and reflect a lot, perhaps once we returned we realized that we were not the same persons as when we left. It was an intense and significant experience, which made it possible to put different realities in contact; the exchange of knowledge allowed us to develop a curiosity towards customs, music, food of other countries, united by the awareness of sharing common values. The reflections made during the training course served to remember the important role that active citizenship plays today, the importance of defending cultural differences as elements of wealth, remembering that there can never be such great differences that we can move away from the only true element of equality: being human and as such enjoy the same rights.
Giuliana C.
Jessica R.
#EUROSUDSTORIES: “UTOPIA”, CZECH REPUBLIC
Completely immersed in the nature, a group of twenty-four young people coming from five different European countries (Italy, Hungary, Portugal, Czech Republic, Poland), met and shared experiences and ideas with the ultimate aim of creating the country of their dream.
We went through different activities, starting with simple ones to know each other and build trust in the group, getting to conferences, brain storming, debates about different topic. The entire project was based on the non-formal education, which is quite different from the formal system of education (school). The methods are very diverse and are based on “learning by doing” that leads to improve specific skills and competences. The project took place in one of the most important ecologic and spiritual centre of eastern Europe: EVC Švýcárna, completely surrounded by nature. Being far from the routines of city was one of the key points of this project. We had time to focus on ourselves and our ideas and give 100% of us in this.
One of the main activities was to create our utopia World, so we have been divided into five groups according to our interests (environment, education, peace&love, futeere, and economy) and we went through a lot of brain storming and debates.
This process led us to the last and important activity: we simulated a conference with ministers of every five topic and after three hours of sharing information we finally created our country by approving thirteen laws. But there is more, we spent lot of time being together and knowing each culture: we prepared cultural nights, bonfire with guitar and drums, a trip in the close city Brno, and we even went to explore ancient caves near to Švýcárna.
What else? We are so grateful to have had this opportunity and, sharing so many emotions during these two weeks was so fulfilling. We really felt into these topics and we were ready to fight for a country that is worthy of our dreams.
Italian participants: Claudia, Lucia and Donato.
