In most European rural areas, more and more young people find themselves today in a socially and civic marginalized situation for various reasons : geographical isolation, ever-increasing rural poverty, difficult access to employment, low level of participation in decision-making processes, low capacity for initiatives by lack of support, low interest in the resources or assets of their region and low awareness of the assets these resources could offer for their professional and personal development, bigger difficulty than urban young people to join international mobility programmes. Yet, many rural youth organisations are trying to reinforce young people’s involvement in their region but they are having more and more difficulties to elicit their commitment, this due to a lack of tools and means which are adapted to their expectations and difficulties, and a lack of sufficient knowledge of the resources which local heritage can represent to support their civil participation, while organisations involved in rural heritage preservation are having increasing difficulties to mobilize young people. At the same time, cultural heritage, whether tangible or intangible, represents a fundamental basis of the identity of rural areas and it is often in danger of disappearing in the absence of a transmission and efforts to recapture this heritage which are adapted to younger generations. Yet this heritage represents a concrete support for the development of an active European citizenship as well as a source of employment for little or not qualified young people. YCARHe (Young Citizens in Action for Rural Heritage) brings together 6 partners (youth and cultural organizations) in 5 countries (Bg, Cr, Fr, Gr, It) to address these findings in a global and interdisciplinary manner. The project aims mainly at reinforcing rural young people’s citizenship, personal development and entrepreneurial spirit based on rural heritage. For this purpose, YCARHe wishes to: - Reinforce the quality and the innovation of non formal educational methods for young people in the field of rural heritage, and to integrate them better in educational pathways to citizenship which are carried out by youth organisations - Reinforce the cooperation between youth organisations and rural heritage preservation organizations - Develop a transnational and intercultural non formal education programme for European rural young people, especially for those who are in marginalized social situation or dropping out of school, in order to lead them to engage for their local communities through collective and individual actions for their local heritage - Capitalize the methods, tools and results of the project and disclose them at European level. To meet these objectives, YCARHe is based on 5 complementary activities, - The formulation of a European frame of reference for the training of youth leaders and rural heritage animators on the theme of non formal education to heritage and citizenship which integrates innovative educational methods such as the use of NICTs or the guidelines of Heritage Interpretation, - The implementation of a transnational pilot training workshop for youth animators and heritage animators on those themes, - The setting up a European non formal educational pathway for rural young people based on 3 sequences of 6 days in 3 countries (Bg, Cr, Fr), aimed mainly at young people with less opportunities, in order to boost their citizen engagement and their personal development. - The creation of an E-Learning platform in 6 languages aimed at European youth animators, rural heritage animators and European rural young people. - The development of an active strategy to disclose the results based on the organisation of 5 national multiplier events. The implementation of these actions will be based on a largely collaborative working method between the partners and an intercultural approach to citizenship and the enhancement of rural heritage. YCARHe will mobilize directly 26 youth animators and at least 30 young people from 5 countries, of which 20 at least in marginalized social situation or dropping out of school. At the end of the project, YCARHe will have reached indirectly: - At least 500 young people in 5 European rural areas - At least 100 representatives of cultural organisations, youth organisations and local development actors in those areas. The dissemination of the results, including the E-learning platform, will enable us to reach several hundreds of European youth and cultural organisations and several thousands of European young people over a one-year horizon after the end of the project.
The project YCARHe (Young Citizens in Action for Rural Heritage) aims to strengthen the mobilization of young Europeans, especially young people in rural areas with fewer opportunities, in the discovery and enhancement of rural heritage. This discovery and development of heritage are still insufficiently used vectors for the development of citizenship and entrepreneurship of young people. In particular, rural youth, especially the most vulnerable among them, tend to reject the cultural elements that bind them to their territory and know little about the value of the heritage that surrounds them. At the same time, the cultural heritage, tangible or intangible, is a basis for the identity of rural territories and is often threatened with extinction because of lack of transmission and of process of reappropriation adapted to the younger generations. Yet this heritage is a concrete support for the development of an active European citizenship at the same time as a source of jobs for young people with little or no qualifications. The partners of the YCARHE project wished to develop methods and tools for the educators in charge of non formal education of young people, particularly in rural areas, to support and improve activities based on the discovery and valorization of heritage. The project also aims to encourage the immersion of young Europeans, especially those from rural areas, into non-formal heritage-oriented collective activities that contribute to the development of their citizenship. The project brought together 6 partners (3 youth organisations -UAC, AMESCI, ACII- and 3 cultural and / or environmental education associations -Udruga Brac, CHI, MKP) in 5 countries (Bg, Cr, Fr, Gr, It ) to respond in a global and interdisciplinary manner to these multiple observations. In order to reach these objectives, the project has implemented a series of complementary activities: - Development of a European Quality Reference System (O1) to guide the training and action of youth workers and rural heritage facilitators on the theme of non-formal education in heritage and citizenship. This framework defines pedagogical principles for the action of youth workers and proposes innovative pedagogical methods such as the use of NICTs or the principles of Heritage Interpretation. It also proposes a series of non-formal education activities to be implemented by youth workers around 3 axes of work: Discovering the rural heritage with young people / Understanding and analyzing the heritage with young people / Engaging young people in intercultural group activities for the promotion of heritage. - This frame of reference was used as a basis for the development of an online resource and training platform (O2) for youth workers. Available in 6 languages and accessible from the project's website (www.ycarhe.eu), this platform explains in a didactic way the pedagogical principles of the reference system and gives access to 35 examples of illustrated activities, structured according to the 3 axes of intervention of the reference system. - 4 transnational learning activities were carried out: • A training of trainers (C1) for youth workers was conducted in September 2016 in Greece. It allowed to present and discuss the axes of the reference system, to test and enrich a first series of activities. • 3 learning workshops (C2 to C4) for young people from the 5 partner countries, mobilizing 35 young people, 15 of them with fewer opportunities. These workshops had a twofold purpose: to train young Europeans to be active in the promotion of heritage, as future youth organization leaders in their territories, and to test with educators trained during the C1 workshop the key concepts and activities developed in the frame of reference and the resource center. - An active strategy of dissemination of the results based in particular on the organization of 5 national multiplier events and communication actions implemented by each partner (two specific tools - Facebook and website-, relayed by the communication tools of the partners). YCARHe directly mobilized 25 youth workers and 35 young people from 5 countries, including 14 in isolation, school dropout or social marginalization. The training and resource platform is available in 6 languages, free to use. It is currently the subject of information campaigns by the partners in each territory, relaying the information developed during the multiplier events.