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“For Youth Cooperation Across the Mediterranean!”
Start date: Jan 1, 2016, End date: Sep 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The events occurred along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea over the past months, in already sadly famous scenarios such as Lampedusa, the Straits of Gibraltar or the Greek coasts, depict over again the Mediterranean Basin as one of the main migratory and most border-controlled areas in the world. As social movements have pointed out, the Mediterranean has become a graveyard where the daily genocide of thousands of civilians is largely ignored. On the contrary, the Mediterranean should be a place for mutual understanding, acknowledged interconnectedness and cooperation. Indeed, as the IOM has estimated, in 2015 it is foreseen that 30.000 people will die while trying to reach the European coastline. Unsurprisingly, this situation has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of populist political parties and movements based on the rejection of immigration across the Mediterranean. In particular, the annual report of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance from the Council of Europe, has identified a dramatic increase in antisemitism, islamophobia, online hate speech and xenophobic political discourse as main trends in 2014. Indeed, the portrayal of migrants as a threat to national security commonly draws on particular images of “the Other”, based on gender equality standards, age group or religion ascription, to categorise them as essentially different and from cultural backgrounds hardly reconcilable with so-called “Western” values and societies. In this context, the network of partners believes that youth organisations must stand up for human rights and align themselves to reject these increasing xenophobic uprisings, therefore contributing with their daily work towards reaching fully inclusive, diverse societies. This project you are reading right now seeks to be a response to the outlined context, stemming from CNJC's own priorities and those agreed on the last stakeholders meeting hold in the framework of the 3rd Mediterranean University on Youth and Global Citizenship. Therefore, the partner organisations seek to frame its annual EuroMed project on interculturality, so as to share among each other advocacy strategies and pedagogical approaches in order to counteract the extreme discourses emerging all along the EuroMed area.The goals of the overall project respond to two ongoing challenges in the EuroMed area:• To meet the current political crisis in the management of migration and asylum flows in our societies by exchanging key practices at the advocacy level to face racism and xenophobia, launched by youth organisations and youth councils. • To meet the ongoing challenge in the management of “diversity” in the EuroMed area by building the capacities of youth organisations through a training of trainers on intercultural issues and enlarging the use of Non Formal Education in the Region.Therefore, two activities are foreseen within the project to tackle the challenges outlined above:• ACTIVITY 1 - Young leaders meeting “Mediterranean youth together: building bridges for understanding“ (foreseen 14-22th February 2016 in Barcelona).• ACTIVITY 2 - Euro-Mediterranean Training of Trainers: “Capacity building in front of racism and xenophobia” (expected 2-9th May 2016, in the framework of the 4th Mediterranean University on Youth and Global Citizenship,in Hammamet, Tunisia).The first activity will gather together young leaders in charge of human rights / intercultural issues within the board of their own organisations, who will be in charge of exchanging best practices in the advocacy and activism level to confront racism and xenophobia. The second one, instead, will group young educators ready to get tools, namely in the area of Non Formal Education, to capacitate their organisations to work from the grassroots level on the outlined topics and achieve a multiplier effect. All these questions will be addressed through a framework of intercultural dialogue, mutual understanding and exchange of experiences among youth workers. Therefore, Non Formal Education tools will be used to address these topics, complemented by formal inputs such as conferences by guest speakers, institutional visits or associations' fairs. As immediate results, while activity 1 will lead to cooperation projects in the field of advocacy and political mobilisation, activity 2 will focus instead in training as a mobilisation tool, in the framework of the political priorities discussed in activity 1. As key impacts, the project will:- Boost the capacities and competences of youth workers and therefore, partner organisations, to work in the field of EuroMed youth cooperation and exchanges. - Increase the use of NFE and intercultural tools in the daily work of youth organisations.- Transfer good practices on political advocacy and pedagogical approaches against racism to the local context.- Create a EuroMed network of trained youth workers and educators in the field of interculturality and anti-racism.
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