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Come Together

2020-1-BG01-KA105-0786702020Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: BG|GE|LV|ES|IT|HU|SK|LT|EL|NL · Grant: €26,505
Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)Inclusion - equity

Objectives

Come Together focuses on the integration and active involvement of youngsters through outdoor games and activities. This project brings together organizations that are already active in the field of youth work and are currently working with youngsters on the line of being excluded from various social groups. All the partner organizations share the need of having preventative activities through which youngsters would experience inclusion, improve their social skills as well as gather different forms of inclusion that they could bring back to the organization. We see that it is crucial to give chance to these youngsters to be out of their usual setting, connect with youngsters from other countries and most importantly to develop the habit of participation and involvement. Thus through Come Together we address ourselves to the topics of social inclusion and active youth participation. While working with this topic previously we discovered that spending time in a natural environment and delivering games for one another brings a lot of joy into the process and creates different ways of learning. Changing the usual context and giving chance to these youngsters to learn from one another creates a different approach towards learning and participating in social situations. When it comes to playing, dissimilarities (values, education, communication styles, etc.) become less important and the focus shifts to fun and togetherness. Moreover, the simple circumstance of living and working in an international environment for a couple of days has already many learning points that we would like to take into account when designing our method and program. Our intention is to create a playful setting where youngsters from mixed backgrounds can discover integration on different levels. On a personal level, youngsters will experience living and working together with others in a dynamic setting that will boost their cooperation skills and create the habit of participating. On a group level, they will exchange different forms and practices of including each other. On a community level, youngsters will come up with simple and practical ways of how they can include other youngsters back home. This project brings together 10 different organizations including the hosting organization, Active Bulgarian Society. The partners come from the following countries: Latvia, Georgia, Italy, Hungary, Spain, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Greece and Slovakia. The exchange activity will take place in predel Saddle, Bulgaria at the beginning of July 2020. The objectives of this project are the following: - bringing together 60 youngsters (between the age of 18-25) from which 80% are facing fewer opportunities - improving their social skills (participation; communication; creating connections) through outdoor games, activities and hikes - improving their cooperation skills and strengthening their ability to work within a group - developing their habit of participation and active involvement through implementing at least 20 outdoor games/activities for each other - improving their active participation by organizing at least 10 games (1 per partner) that tackle social exclusion - gathering at least 20 forms or practices (2 per partner) that partner organizations can use to include more youngsters from their local communities - creating and disseminating 10 articles about the project (1 per partner) - promoting non-formal learning opportunities in the surroundings of partner organizations and their networks with promotional materials (articles and visuals) created by us and the participants - ensuring that the evaluation of the learning process happens during the project through 60 Youthpasses and 60 questionnaires. During the YE the participants will get familiar with the topic of social inclusion and improve their social skills by exchanging their own knowledge, by getting in touch with the local community, by arranging simple tasks (such as preparing meals, taking care of the accommodation), by playing and organizing various outdoor games and activities in order to improve their skill of cooperation and discover different ways of working within a group and by facing different situations in which they can see the impact that their active participation can bring. We are going to work with games in a natural context in order to create a new and playful approach towards social inclusion. This working method comes from our vision and experience that learning can only happen when excitement and fun is included, playing games is a simple way to invite people to learn and discover.

Project partners (10)