The project partners from Lithuania, Italy and Ireland raised the issue of insufficient cultural activities for youth in rural and per-urban areas and low engagement of them into the local community’s life. The lack of such facilities and possibilities is caused by geographical, social and economic restrictions, as the local municipalities have no sufficient funding for ensuring relevant culture and leisure activities in the non-urban areas characterised by aging and sparce population. The project is developed for addressing the need of developing a model of youth work in rural and per-urban areas through culture and training the youth workers to apply it in their work. The youth engagement through culture model would have several goals: 1) assistance in creating the variety of culture life for youth in local areas, 2) increasing participation of the youth in the rural and peri-urban life through building a stronger community sense, 3) increasing attractiveness of the rural and peri-urban areas; and 4) decreasing the generation gap.- Organisation of 3 dissemination events. An overall goal of the project is increasing of engagement of rural and peri-urban youth into community life through enhancement of their culture activities and decreasing the generation gap. Three objectives are set for the achieving the overall goal: 1. Development and piloting of the model of engagement of youth in the rural and peri-urban communities through culture activities. 2. Strengthening of skills of youth workers for application of culture activities into work with youth in rural and peri-urban areas. 3. Dissemination of the model to the youth workers and stackeholders. The project targets to work with two target groups: - Youth workers working in the rural and peri-urban areas (no age limit), - Youth from rural and peri-urban areas (14-29 years of old) The project will achieve several results: - Development of a model of youth engagement into rural and peri-urban community’s life through application of various culture activities, - Testing the model with 12 youth workers working rural and peri-urban areas in a 3-day short-term staff training. - Testing the model with 15 young people from rural and peri-urban areas in a 5-days blended youth mobility training. - Organisation of 3 dissemination events in three partner countries. - Organisation of 3 transnational partner meetings.
The overall goal of the project was to increase of engagement of rural and peri-urban youth into community life through enhancement of their culture activities and to decrease of generation gap. The objectives of the project were: 1. Development and piloting of the model of engagement of youth in the rural and peri-urban communities through culture activities. 2. Strengthening of skills of youth workers for application of culture activities into work with youth in rural and peri-urban areas. 3. Dissemination of the model to the youth workers and stakeholders.
The project partners initiated the project due to the insufficient cultural activities for the youth in rural and peri-urban areas and low engagement of the youth to the local community life. The access to the cultural and leisure facilities in rural and peri-urban areas is weaker than in the urban areas. It is caused by geographical, social, and economic restrictions of the rural areas characterised by aging and sparce population and insufficient funding of the rural areas. Despite that, the community sense often is much better developed in the rural areas. Culture activities, including arts, music, and other unites people with common interests, builds sense of community and values, however the community life is predominated by the elderly and the young people do not actively take part in the community life. The project was targeted to analyse and compare the youth situation and work in three partner countries and to prepare a model of youth work for engaging of youth to the community through culture. Two project partners (from Italy and Lithuania) operated in the rural areas and one (from Ireland) in the peri-urban one, so the project was focused on both type of areas, seeking for the common solution of youth engagement.