Youth Exchange – Time to say I CAN
Currently, the European community is facing 2 big problems among young people: the lack of job opportunities and the tendency for intolerance, discrimination and exclusion, which is widely visible across the societies. Nowadays, the discrimination and exclusion showed by young people towards minorities and immigrants come from the uncertainty about finding a workplace or from the uncertainty of the future. The religion matter is marginal, and young people are actionably manifesting discrimination and xenophobe due to the uncertainty of their own future. At the end of 2015, the unemployment rate among young people from the participating countries was high and statistics show us that in some countries 1 out of 2 young people below 25 years old does not have a job. This situation escalades the fears for future and leads to tendencies of radicalization, intolerance and discrimination towards other youth people with different nationalities and cultures.
Main objectives of the project:
- Promote tolerance, intercultural dialogue and development of entrepreneurial competences for 35 young people aged 18-30 from 5 European countries.
- Gain of key competencies (entrepreneurship, cultural awareness and expression), with the goal of multiplying this initiative at the level of the partner’s local communities.
- Development the capacity of the partner NGO’s for cooperation at national and international level against discrimination, intolerance and radicalization of young people, by transferring the know-how and good practices gained during the 2 mobilities.
- Inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities belonging to minorities or immigrants, in order to establish communication bridges for intercultural dialogue and tolerance.
Youth Exchange “Time to say I CAN” proposed a different approach for the discrimination problem using non-formal education. We aimed to create the impact for participants and the local youngsters as the activities were implemented to multiply the concept and the activities experienced in all the communities of the partners, so we could integrate the concept in a mainstream for youth work, with a lot of visibility and participation of the community.
This Youth Exchange involved young people from Lithuania, Spain, Italy, Poland and Romania. During 10 days they were learning new methods of non-formal education, playing games, teaching the others, sharing knowledge, exploring new cultures, getting to know each other, improving their skills and competencies.
Through the project, young people from different parts of Europe had the opportunity to get to know the degree of social responsibility, the importance of their role in initiating on the local environment, have developed an attitude of social entrepreneurs, self-esteem, competence in the labor market and intercultural awareness.