This Youth exchange project will take place over 8 days in Pylos, Messinia, South Peloponnese, and will truly allow each youngster to acquire and develop competences and art skills to confront life in their everyday life, offering the youth opportunities to learn about cultural heritage of universal value, to refresh the cultural elements that are about to be forgotten.
During the implementation of the Project, the participants will cooperate and will be motivated to the whole steps of the Project, creating their own portfolio of competences, art skills and knowledge in order to succeed in labor market, following the principles of the non-formal education. They will acknowledge other organizations’ culture and art reality in different European countries. The participants are expected to act as multipliers, who will first understand and be aware of the gained experience and then apply the newly acquired knowledge with their beneficiaries after coming back to their respective local communities.
The Youth Exchange program aims at promoting the active participation of young people in democratic EU life and fosters debate about cultural heritage, improving key competencies, skills of young people, promoting their participation in society, their social inclusion and well-being and fostering improvements in youth work and youth policy at local, national and international level. They will really develop their key competencies through art sessions and workshops, in order to empower them for being active European citizens. This will also allow youngestres to participate actively in recognizing and developing their own strengths in the subject and identifying and sustaining their own lines of enquiry.
The project will work towards being a toolkit for such work to be implemented as an ongoing success project. 5 participants per partner aged 18-30, and 8 for the coordinator, especially those with fewer opportunities or coming from disadvantaged families, are the target group working with the method and activities of non-formal Education.
The project’s objectives are:
•To gather young people from different cultures, giving them the chance to study and appreciate tangible cultural heritage (museums, monuments), to sparkle their interest about cultural values.
•To motivate youth and enhance their culture heritage awareness and expression through art, theatre and culture workshops and activities.
•To enhance and raise cultural awareness of the participants and train them in storytelling, bringing them together from different European countries, promoting their social, communication skills and team spirit.
•To increase and develop youngsters’ basic competencies and art skills necessary to be active European citizens.
•To be able to share experiences, exchange ideas and best practices among participants and to establish quality partnerships with colleagues from other European countries.
•To encourage new forms of communication between local citizens and participants, to interconnect them and to ensure exchange of experiences and create a network with common activities.
•To bring together youth with the NGO’S, local stakeholders from the local community, interact and exchange ideas, experiences.
•To enhance active participation of European youth both in tangible and intangible cultural heritage through a holistic and learners-driven project.
During the Youth Exchange activities and workshops, the 43 participants -young people will witness the benefits of collaboration, non-formal and life-long learning, teamwork, simulation activities and peer learning. So, young people with fewer opportunities, facing cultural, educational and social obstacles will find ways to enhance social inclusion and their social skills through the participation in the non-formal learning activities and workshops of the Youth Exchange.One of the ongoing challenges in our youth exchange is the integration of disadvantaged or social excluded groups in the community and their active involvement in international groups.
