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Social Media and Youth Activism
Start date: Aug 1, 2015, End date: Jul 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The main aim of this youth exchange was to raise awareness and create space for open dialogue, intercultural understanding, mutual respect and acceptance of diversity between young people in our organizations. By this project we tried to empower European youth, by enabling them to raise their cultural awareness through a mix of methods of Non-formal learning and using social media tools like action blogging, footage, article- and video production. Thus sharing their life stories and experiences to enhance their mutual understanding, better intercultural communications, networking, and friendship. Groups of of 6 participants plus one group leader were representing five partner countries (Bulgaria, Lithuania, Spain, Slovakia and Netherlands), 35 participants in total. The main activity of the project was implemented during 30th of November until 8th of December in Pingjum, the Netherlands. The daily program consisted of 8 working days. The program was implemented through using non-formal education methods, participants were offered wide variety of interactive workshops, presentations and discussion platforms comprising blogging, graphical designing, and video production. The output of the workshops were targeted at European citizens in general, raising awareness of discrimination issues all over Europe. Project objectives were: 1. Fostering mutual understanding and intercultural understanding among project participants 2. New media education - learning and experiencing: blogging, graphical designing, video and poster production, through hands-on and practical use of the new media tools. 3. Minimizing stereotypes and prejudices through an open dialogue space created by new media tools, providing an unbiased room for creative life story telling. 4. Empowering young people with knowledge and competencies to actively take part in society and take ownership over their own lives, in order to enrich and enlighten their everyday activities in general. 5. Experience education through non-formal methods, giving youth direct access to make practical testing of their skills and learning style. 6. To promote Erasmus+ programme opportunities that participants can use in their future The needs that were addressed in this project are: Intercultural understanding among young people in Europe, raising tolerance and solidarity by using new methods and tools for sharing the information and learning, enhancing life skills and competences among young people to support growth and innovation for the future of European community. The working methods used during the 8 day program were: - cultural animation (ice-breaking games and energizers), - team-building activities, - exchange of experiences, - presentations by both participants and guests, - discussion platforms, - non-formal education activities (including learning-by-doing activities and creative exercises such as simulation games and creative thinking activities), - cultural activities, - new media skills - on-going evaluation The use of new media opens the possibilities of dissemination and exploitation widely. Through an online platforms like action blogging, Facebook, YouTube etc. we shared the outcomes and results of the project which is available to anyone – all over the world. In addition, each partner organized the presentation of the project results where project participants shared with other interested youngsters, what were their impressions, experience and learning outcome by participating in our project. As a global outcome of our project we expected that participants would gain and use the new skills and competences to increase their intercultural sensitivity, become more tolerant and respectful toward other European cultures and become more active in their communities and organizations. We do strongly believe that we have achieved this goal and this process is still pending since the use of the skills and experiences gained during our project will have long term impact in daily life of each participant. For the long run perspective, the project will have a long term impact on locally and internationally on personal and organizational level in partner countries by multiplying effect of educating young people with ‘pass it on’ strategy. The learning outcome of the project will be an increased knowledge and experience of young people in using new media tools for intercultural dialogue and promotion of European values and Erasmus+ programme.

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