On 28 and 29 January 2021 the first international meeting of representatives of organizations cooperating with the ′′ Attracting Tomorrow’s Adults Today ′′.
Through the sharing of good practices and exchange of experience we presented the councillors how to work with young people in the towns and villages, and what tools to use to render the locations more youth-friendly.
Through this method of education we intend to increase the offer of informal education and leisure time alternatives, to engage more youth in the dialogue with the decision makers in the planning and offering such services in the short-term and to make the home town more attractive to young people in the long-term.
The principal goal of the project is to apply the efficient method of education for the target group 40+ in order to instigate communication between the decision makers and young people; to share experience and identify tools for a town which is open and friendly to young people.
The secondary goal is the awareness of how important it is to integrate youth of all age and social groups as well as to integrate youth with special learning needs and/or limited opportunities.
A long-term goal is the improvement of quality of public domain by availability of informal education and alternative leisure time activities for youth, their engagement in the civil and community life.
By meeting those goals, a negative phenomenon – migration of young people from the country to the city and loss of connectedness to the place where they live – will be eliminated in the long term.
The project is a continuation to the outcomes from our previous KA2 project, Education of decision-makers and social services providers – quality in care. Its realisation did prove the importance of the target group in community development education, as it includes the corner stone of a civil society, education and integration of youth, socially challenged and handicapped persons. The course of the project has also revealed the pitfalls of providing education to the target group due to their age, lack of foreign language skills, low time availability, and introspection skill.
The project focuses on town and village councillors and youth workers in rural areas.
Those participants suffer from the disadvantage of their geographical location and the size of their population. They do not have access to education and to the necessary knowledge and skills in rural areas. Through participation in the project, they can discuss with counterparts from abroad and compare the conditions and differences in the systems.
This will enable them to identify a method for efficient coping with problems in a specific rural environment which suffers from poor transportation, low density of population, lack of services for young people as well as absence of resources for their integration and engagement in public life.
Beyond Improvement of educators’ competences we plan three blended mobilities as a main learning activities for target group.
Having visited the partnering organisation, engaged in discussion and seen the practice, the participants will be able to better reflect on their own work; they will understand the importance of engaging youth in the community and which solutions do or do not work. We are convinced that examples of good practice will deliver a “wow” effect – the most important first step towards change.
If the assumed goals of the project are met, the project shows potential for long-term sustainability.
We recognise the sustainability especially in the key collaboration of the councillors and youth workers with the partnering organisations whose subsequent activities and competences can support municipalities in the deployment of community tools and tools for the integration and engagement of youth.
All collaboration initiated by the project between the project organisations and the target group will educate and motivate regional key actors to search for and adopt sustainable solutions in the mission for social development and inclusion of the population in need.
The topic of development of social services and preparation for the ageing of the society has been with us in our travels to the Czech local action group Saint John of Nepomuk,French association of communities Syndicat de Lorge in France and to the Local Action Group BURA in Croatia. Through collaboration of our organisations, we were investigating suitable solutions to provision of services which might be applicable in our rural communities in the future.
The core of our joint effort was the sharing of good practice examples and discussion on what is failing in our area and where we recognise potential for improvement and further.
Through the shared examples of good practice we realised that:
- a) Social development in the towns and respecting the inhabitants’ needs are the key aspects of investment projects and building of infrastructure
- b) It is necessary to respond to the changing needs of the inhabitants and of the users of the services
These are the goals of all partnering organisations: use collaboration of all participants to make life in our rural areas easier, to meet the needs our areas have so as to bring the level of our everyday efforts a little higher.
INTERNATIONAL TRAINING COURSE FOR “TOMORROW’S ADULTS TODAY” PLOEUC-L’HERMITAGE, FRANCE BRETAGNE IN FEBRUARY
During this week is our association taking part in the training course “Attracting tomorrow’s adults today” In France, region of Bretany. In particular, the agglomeration of Saint-Breuic is an inter-municipality comprising 32 municipalities, and more than 150 000 inhabitants. Participants of this Mobility are coming from countries – France, Italy and Czech Republic.
The 1st day of our mobility had our participants have an opportunity to get know each other better during welcoming session in meeting room of Syndicat de Lorge. Afterwards they moved to Saint-Breuic town hall where were presented program of Jeunesse & Bourse Zèphir by Nicolas Nguyen, elected to the youth. The zèphyr grant allows young young people aged 11 to 30 from the territory to carry out a solidarity, cultural, civic or general interest projects, through financial, logistical or support assistance for the project. Since last year, projects on climate change, City of tomorrow, nature and revegetation, reuse and sustainable consumption have also been supported by the agglomeration.
15th February was second day of the training course course “Attracting tomorrow’s adults today” in France. All participants met in the meeting room of Syndicat de Lorge. Our team had an opportunity to get know better youth actions of Syndicat. The Syndicat offers different services for all age groups, the most important:
- “Pocket Money” initiative, which is available in all Syndicat de Lorge. It consists of short missions (about 3 hours), proposed to 16 and 17 years-old who get in return some pocket money.
- Youth Municipal Councils – body of democratic participation for young people from 10-12 years-old in their municipalities.
- Objective of other initiative – Renc’art Jeunes – is to let young artists have a space to express themselves and to highlight their practice.
- Training courses offered to young people aimed to assisted to young people with writing CV or motivation letters.
Then had our team possibility to visit youth sites in the territory of Syndicat, talking about various sport centers, football pitches, tennis courts, leisure centers and libraries.
Wednesday, 16th of February our team started the day in Department Council of Saint-Breuic. Then day visited center Europ’Armor, which primarily targets youth of the Cotes-d’Armor department by offering everybody to benefit from the advice and the information on studying and working in Europe, mobilizing European funds to finance a project, discovering the European Union, its institution, its culture, having fun and mobilities around Europe.
Main missions of the servis is animation, informing and advising. Afterwards they get know better The Pass’Engagement, initiative that propose to young people from 18-25 years-old to engage in volunteering in an association located in Cotes-d’Armor or in social center providing services to individuals. In exchange of this commitment (2 hours per week), a funding is allowed by the department to support a personal and/or profesional project, giving a grant up to 1200€. Other interesting scheme is a Housing scheme, that put together youth searching for a housing solution with adults ready to share their house with those youth.
On Thursday 17th our team had a chance to visit coast of Pléneuf Val-André. It was a perfect opportunity for see how people spend their spare time and to discover the beauty of Bretagne. In the afternoon participants visited Cite des métiers in Ploufragan. The youth structure, where young people can seek professional consulting and find new opportunities. The centre also presented their portal for youngsters, where they can find suitable work based on their competences and interests.La Cité des Métiers organises events and creates boardgames to provide young people information about job market in more approachable way.
On the last day of the Mobility, Friday the 18th, came the time for evaluation of the previous days and workshop, in which everybody had a chance to think about which of the previously seen ideas can be implemented in their own countries. Divided into small groups participants created sentences and plans for their future action that ought to be done after the return. In the evening our team was presented to another municipality in the region – Moncontour. Small city, in which used be organised mediaeval festivals.
