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Sports volunteering for social inclusion and active community participation
Start date: Sep 1, 2016, End date: Jan 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

This 10 day multilateral Youth Exchange is the initiative of partner organizations from the UK, Lithuania, Portugal, Italy, and Bulgaria. The activity is planned to take place in Rudiskes, Lithuania, with the aim to create transferable models and practices which publicise the idea and values of sports volunteering using creative artistic means. The project will advance the level of young people's participation in volunteering for inclusion of disadvantaged youth through non-competitive games and sports and get insights of what it is to be a sports volunteer in different European countries. During the previous youth encounters partners have revealed a huge interest of local hosting communities towards sports volunteering projects we made and towards the idea of voluntarism in general but little understanding of its principles and values. Therefore, the international partnership of youth organizations represented by young people and youth leaders formed at the previous youth exchange believe it is important to develop a sense of social responsibility, the skills required to be active agents for change and development, and the knowledge required to make informed choices within this context. This project will bring together 12 young people and 2 group leaders from the UK, Lithuania, Portugal, Italy, and Bulgaria including young participants with a difficult social background. We have chosen this target group since they have fewer opportunities to be exchanged and get intercultural understanding. They do not possess sufficient resources to get international experience. Another factor for choosing them is that young people with fewer opportunities are a very promising group. Empowering them to set socially valuable goals and giving them instruments to reach these goals will make our societies healthier and more humanistic.The programme of youth exchange is composed of the following three main elements:- namely work programme (educational workshops and evaluations), - cultural programme (cultural visits in the locality and Inter Cultural Learning exercises),- evening social programme.The project will start with a block on team–building and ice-breaking where the atmosphere and group spirit will be formed and the continuation of the exchange consists of balanced set of inputs on various aspects of communication, information and Inter Cultural Learning and non-formal education exercises. Open space workshops were chosen to be the base for the work programme as the most efficient creativity boosting method to develop the main theme of the exchange. Options for the cultural programme will be offered for discussions depending on its relevance to the theme of the project and its interest to all the young participants. The exchange will be finalized by blocks on follow-up and future partnership planning and evaluation. During the exchange a special report group will also work on the systematization of the findings and tools develop during the Activity to provide information for the web-platform.European dimension of the project will be developed by all the partners together, as they intend to extend such projects among young people of multinational communities, basing on interlinked educational activities. Non-formal educational means will be taken from on-line SALTO Toolbox and Booklets and adapted for goals of the exchange. This will be done to raise disadvantaged young people’s awareness of European problems and to show how these young people may participate in creating new, united Europe.It is expected that the young people and youth leaders will return to their youth groups and organisations with increased confidence to volunteer for community benefit. After the youth exchange is over we also expect that new projects and teams will be initiated and formed. The participants will be given records of what was done within the exchange to spread this information in their local groups and communities by making presentations and organizing workshops.
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