My Town Your Town [MTYT] is a training project that will raise youth employability, skills and inclusion through intergenerational tourism development. The key feature of the project is for youth, aged 18 to 30 and from a wide range of backgrounds including disadvantaged, to work with older mentors to produce a new interpretation, a new narrative, for an existing or new tourism or cultural destination in their local area, positioning it in a way that will better represent the values of the EU and the multi-cultural facets of the host community, and to better appeal to 21st century visitors. They will do this through an active learning and mentoring programme developed by the partners, representing Cyprus, Italy, Croatia and Greece, and an expert partner from Scotland, UK. It is notable that the 4 delivery partners also represent the 4 countries in the EU with the highest youth unemployment [as of May 2018] and all have large tourism and heritage sectors, and it is the key objective of the project to link and address these factors to provide more opportunities for young citizens. MTYT will exploit the excellent potential that this wide sector has to offer for delivering a wide range of positive outcomes and benefits for young people, increasing their skills, unearthing talents, providing new opportunities and connections, and helping them feel more a part of their community by bringing new life to tourism. To achieve this the project will run sustainable tourism training for the young people, develop and pilot the innovative interpretation tool with them, the mentors and local SME tourism related businesses. The project will publish a new platform to host the interpretations and tools, disseminating the outputs in an accessible, simple and fun format, featuring a tourism game mobile application, and enable youth organisations from across the EU to participate in shaping and capturing opportunities for tourism in their local area. The methodology for delivering the project is based on using two techniques, successfully piloted for the PLAN project, an Erasmus+ funded project which developed and tested: an Intergenerational Employability Mentor Model for youths and the experienced older generation/retired (EOGR); and the Cluster, a network hosted by the project partner and including, youth, mentors, SME businesses, and other partners [including youth NGOs and local government agencies], that acts as a new player in the local area to support employability, social integration and mobility for youth. The project’s training programme will also be based on the youth entrepreneurship training developed in PLAN, and draw on tourism training and outputs from other recent Erasmus+ projects. A minimum of 10 youths, 5 mentors 4 businesses and local partners will participate in each area. The Partners and Clusters will work together across nationalities to share good practices and experiences. The rich mix of participants enables a rich mix of outputs The innovative approach is designed to ensure that the learning, though not in a formal educational setting, is supported by educational professionals, and enjoyable for all ages. The Cluster will participate in a pilot that will take place in a real active marketplace, working with industry players who will use the outcomes from this shared experience. Our rationale for this approach is based on our experiences in other projects where the outputs and dissemination does not always lead to uptake of the products and innovation, as it does not have a role in an active marketplace. For youth the project offers many areas to develop their skills and competences, so suits participants from a wide range of backgrounds. Along with the direct benefits to the youth participating, the project will bring positive and long-lasting effects for all participants and organisations directly involved, and indirectly for the communities and tourism businesses in the local areas in which the projects are held. Interpretation project examples include: Paphos working with the local tourism office to highlight health and wellbeing tourism; war and revolution monuments in Hvar and building a story beyond regional conflict to the future; accessible cuisine in Trani with restaurants that are making their premises more disability friendly; Tourism through a migrant’s eyes in Larisa; devising a compelling story for how the citiy, can compete in Greece’s largest sector. My Town Your Town’s top priority is to provide opportunities for all young people, and through innovative and smart design, also directly addresses a top challenge in tourism, as identified by the EU, the need to constantly innovate and develop new attractive products in a sustainable manner for local communities and the environment. Europeans need a strong tourism sector for economic reasons, but also to better know each other and better see what unites them.
My Town Your Town [MTYT] is a training project to raise youth employability, skills and inclusion through intergenerational tourism development. The key feature of the project was for youth, aged 18 to 30 and formed a wide range of backgrounds including disadvantaged, to work with older mentors to produce a new interpretation, a new narrative, for an existing or new tourism or cultural destination in their local area, positioning it in a way to better represent the values of the EU and the multi-cultural facets of the host community, and to better appeal to 21st century visitors. The active learning and mentoring programme was developed by partners, representing Cyprus, Italy, Croatia and Greece, and an expert partner from Scotland, UK. It is notable that the 4 delivery partners also represent the 4 countries in the EU with the highest youth unemployment [as of May 2018] and all have large tourism and heritage sectors. It is the key objective of the project to link and address these factors to provide more opportunities for young citizens. MTYT has exploited the excellent potential that this wide sector offers and delivered a wide range of positive outcomes and benefits for young people. Youth increased their skills, unearthing talents, were provided with new opportunities and connections, and helped them feel more a part of their community by bringing new life to tourism. To achieve this, the project, run a sustainable tourism training for the young people, developed and piloted the innovative interpretation tool together with the youth, the mentors and local SME tourism related businesses. The project published a new website that hosts the interpretations and tools, thus disseminating the outputs in an accessible, simple and fun format. The website enables youth organisations from across the EU to participate in shaping and capturing opportunities for tourism in their local area. The methodology of the project was based on using two techniques, successfully piloted for the PLAN project, an Erasmus+ funded project which developed and tested: an Intergenerational Employability Mentor Model for youths and the experienced older generation/retired (EOGR); and the Cluster, a network hosted by the project partners, youth, mentors, SME businesses, and other local stakeholders. The cluster acts as a new player in the local area to support employability, social integration and mobility for youth. The project’s training programme is based on the youth entrepreneurship training developed in PLAN, and the new MTYT tourism training and outputs. A minimum of 10 youths, 5 mentors 4 businesses and local partners participated in each area. The Partners and Cluster worked together across nationalities to share good practices and experiences. The rich mix of participants enabled a rich mix of outputs. The innovative approach was designed to ensure that the learning, though not in a formal educational setting, is supported by educational professionals, and it is enjoyable for all ages. The Cluster took place in a real active marketplace. Partners worked with industry players who can use the outcomes from this shared experience. Our rationale for this approach was based on our experiences in other projects where the outputs and dissemination does not always lead to uptake of the products and innovation, as it does not have a role in an active marketplace. Participating youth, was offered training and workshops in many areas in order to develop their skills and competences. Along with the direct benefits for the participating youth, the project brought positive and long-lasting effects for the organisations directly involved, and indirectly for the local communities and tourism businesses in which the project was held. The interpretation examples included highlights for: - health and wellbeing tourism; - monuments for future peace; - stories beyond regional traditions and culture; - hospitality and accessible cuisine in restaurants that are making their premises more disability friendly; - tourism through a migrant’s eyes; My Town Your Town’s top priority was to provide opportunities for all young people, through innovative and smart design. It has directly addressed a top challenge in tourism, as identified by the EU, the need to constantly innovate and develop new attractive products in a sustainable manner for local communities and the environment. Europeans can have a strong tourism sector for economic reasons, but also to better know each other and better see what unites them.