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European Youth Identity
Start date: Apr 1, 2016, End date: Jun 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

“European Youth Identity” project's target audience was young people from rural and urban areas with poor life conditions, low-average level of education, unemployed or working-abroad families who had no experience in international teams. It addressed the lack of interest towards any kind of learning and the lack of information on cultural identity that young people from rural areas usually reflect. It thus provided a creative and innovative, as well as practical, learning mobility opportunity for young people and their leaders. The project aimed at orienting and helping these participants in the process of social development. In order to achieve that we gave the participants an opportunity to discover their competences through informal methods of education and realization of personal aims, orientation goals and weak/strong characteristics, which they improved with our assistance. Specifically, we used examples of certain good practices in order for them to select and develop competences for their desirable working sphere. The main activities included role-playing, brainstorming, getting energized, discussing and initiating simulations regarding social enterpreneurship. By using these methods, the group spirit and the participants' communication skills were improved. Moreover, participants' management skills were advanced and they were encouraged to participate actively in the team as well as use some of their individual qualities for further improvement.They were involved in all the steps of the project; signing learning agreements and facilitating sessions. Generally, non-formal education methods and tools, as for example Compass and ICL games,World Café ,Living Library, Workshops, Drama games, innovative materials and web instruments, empowered the participants to be more active and efficient in terms of initiating, organizing and implementing youth activities. More importantly, the method of participating and sharing had a strong positive impact upon them, making them ready to support the process of cultural dialogue, act as European citizens and promote respect for diversity. The project therefore helped the young participants develop skills and abilities that may have been neglected by the school curriculum but are really important in terms of acquiring experience at the beginning of one's self-development and becoming competitive in the process of finding a job. Lastly, during the 7 days of exchange participants discovered the European world, its history and present. Romania, Turkey, Macedonia and Bulgaria helped expand 22 youth participants from rural areas’s knowledge on European history, traditions and customs. Each country's participants actually promoted their own traditions and customs using intercultural dialogue between generations. The project also promoted European citizenship and achieved social cohesion between the partners. Thus, the project's results are the new improved and developed competences of the participants and their organizations, the impression the activities had upon local supporters, citizens and media and the materials disseminated in other educational and social contexts to be used for raising cultural awareness of people (eg. "Forum Theater Festival” and “ Reading Culture-Reading Life” videos, a prezi of the symbols and cultural heritage and a poster of the "Post-it calendar action”).
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