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Unknown beauties revealed
Start date: Jul 1, 2015, End date: Dec 31, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Unknwon beauties revealed was a youth exchange implemented by the Romanian NGO Asociatia Tineri pentru Comunitate Bistrita in partnership with the English organisation RV Project. The exchange brought together 16 young people aged between 13 and 30 residents in the partners countries who were highly motivated to take part in this project and who had a basic knowledge of English and 3 team leaders who carried out specific activities in Bistrita and in 3 rural areas of the Bistrita Nasaud county between 7 and 17 of September 2015. The main objective of the activities were be to rise the awareness of young people living in urban and rural areas about the importance of preserving and promoting the beauties and utility of the rural areas in order to facilitate tourist, economical, cultural and employability development. The second objective was to animate three rural areas chosen by the Romanian participants in order to change the attitude of the young people living there and make them increase their self esteem, feel more proud of living there and less discriminated in the relationship with urban youth. In addition, the project met some of the objectives and priorities of the Erasmus plus project and of the KA1, such as: raising participants' awareness and understanding of their cultures and countries, promoting international cooperation between youth, promoting the acquisition of foreign languages ( English and Romanian), promoting equity and inclusion by including vulnerable young people, assuring protection and safety of participants, promoting active citizenship, developing important skills and competences to be mentioned in the Youth Passes. During the ten days of the project the participants consolidated the group through team building activities organised in Bistrita - the meeting place. They continued with a day of discussions, debates and brainstorming regarding youth vs rural areas in both countries. Then, the exchange continued with 6 days of exploration of 3 rural areas of Bistrita Nasaud county: the old mines of Rodna, the mineral waters of Valea Vinului and Valea Mare and the dendrological park and old castle of Bethlen - Arcalia. Using the methods: photography, video making, street interview, story telling, hiking, football and rugby game, team building activities, self reflection and group reflection moments, the participants were able to better understand the Romanian rural reality, they made comparisons with the English rural reality and they tried to meet the objectives of the project. The exchange ended with two days spent in Bistrita where they started preparing the dissemination materials: an e-book promoting the rural areas discovered in the Erasmus plus context and a site promoting the exchange activities, they established the online promotion strategy and they divided the responsibilities in small groups. The impact of the project was on three levels: the participants who developed a number of skills and competences as well as knowledge, such as: team work, communication in mother tongue and English, digital skills, mathematical skills, knowledge about the significance of some rural areas, knowledge about the same English reality, the ability of learning to learn and of self awareness. At the end they all got a Youth Pass certificate that officially confirms the acquired results. In addition to that, the present project was a good opportunity for the participating organisations to consolidate their partnership, to share experience and knowledge regarding the theme of the project and to set up new partnership. The impact was also be on the local youth living in the 3 rural communities explored who increased their awareness regarding the significance of the beauties and places surrounding them and who thus will be more self confident more interested in being active citizens too and take action in order to improve the present reality. Last but not least, through the non formal activities carried out we managed to animate those areas and to rise awareness of other people from the rural communities. We consider that all the above mentioned results have a long term impact as they will help young people in their studentship or future careers and also in their future life, they will rise the awareness of the local communities and make them want to take action and produce changes and they will also consolidate a long term partnership between the partner organisations involved in the project and represent a starting point for other projects.

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