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Solidarity in Diffabilities

2020-1-NL02-KA105-0028992020Youth mobilityfinalizedGood practice
Countries: NL|ES|EL|MK|TR|PL|RS|BG|RO · Grant: €42,623.82
Access for disadvantagedInclusion - equityDisabilities - special needs

Objectives

Well, the original objectives and ideas we will describe below, and we tried and managed still to keep the original objectives and aims, but this was the most challenged project we ever had because of Covid-19! For all the changes and things that happened we had contact with National Agency and got amendments for that, but still you always lose a lot of money and we had planned many participants with disabilities and several couldn't come, still we had many participants with fewer opportunities and new partners that really were benefitting from this topic and learned a lot for their NGO’s because of this project. But it is never nice to have to switch and change so many things. It started with already the APV, then already from some countries it was really hard to attend the project because of the constant changes in the circumstances. Then we had to postpone the project because half of the partners couldn’t come, and exactly when we had finally planned the project in July because the Netherlands got green finally you know what happened and we turned dark red again in less than a week. Than after sending all the some people were send back in the airport and many countries were rejected completely and we had to switch partners in the last moment. We got everybody tested before the project so we could have a “safe and quite normal” project, but then in the project the travel restrictions all over Europe changed and everyone need to be tested again before being able to travel back home, we were careful in the project, so everybody made it home safe and corona free its main objectives were to support the social inclusion of youngsters with mental disabilities, present them diverse cultures, foster mutual understanding between young people from different countries, develop solidarity and promote tolerance among young people. Additionally, this project promoted the young people's active participation, their European citizenship and the European cooperation in the youth field, as well as improving the level of key competences and skills of young people, especially for those with fewer opportunities, in particular through increased learning mobility opportunities for young people with disabilities, youth organizations and youth leaders. The current project appeared to be a natural follow up of the several Exchanges we have organized back in the last years that involved mentally disabled people and the after effect resulting on successfully sending several people with disabilities on EVS and the increased interest in such mobility programs. The project aimed to bring together a lot of people with different disabilities, also from different countries, in order to connect with each other and to share experience. As this problem is treated differently in every country, the time together would facilitate the intercultural talk and raise the level of awareness and cooperation on this field between the countries. That’s why it was called “Solidarity in Diffabilities” After the huge impact on the participants and their peers after the previous projects we decided it is our obligation to develop further the idea of a youth exchange including a few new partners for young people who want to work with mental disabilities. As a result of our efforts, we got so many inquiries from other organizations and individuals that would like to take part in different activities and projects focused on disadvantaged young people. We did include from the original partners the Netherlands, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, but in the last moment Greece, Spain and Serbia could not fly so we took an extra partner from Turkey and Romania. Both reliable partners because we knew them already. In this way we ended up with enough participants and with of course less people with disabilities, but still we had around 12 people with mental disabilities, some of them had anxiety disorders and ASS and connection disturbances. Together with the helpers they did play an important role, not only because they did help at the beginning with the integration of the participants to the design of the project but also because they were be the ones that afterwards brought back home the knowledge that they gained. In this way, the experiences was widely shared, and the project did reach its aim.

Project partners (10)