With this Youth Exchange, we would like to continue the practices we have started with organising our first Youth Exchange in June 2018. Share your story! was an engaging experience for youth interested in storytelling and the sharing of cultures! With the Non-violent Communication (NVC) Youth Exchange, we would like to take our ideas for sharing cultural diversity through storytelling and artistic methods to the next level. This time, we will use non-violent communication and art methods to foster sharing, cultural exchange, and learning about discrimination (which, according to youth, requires more attention nowadays). Discrimination is very complicated to recognize unless one knows what it is. Non-violent communication provides a solid foundation for discussing important issues on the modern social, cultural, and political agenda. As the youth who created this project, we like to get together to harness the power of non-violent communication to be more efficient in shaping our communities and making change.
Enabling the emergence of NVC consciousness helps us put us in touch with what is alive in us and in others, how to live in harmony, be aware of needs, and solve conflicts through collective action for transformation. Raise awareness about the humanity in all of us and contribute to reconciliation and peace in the world.
Youth for Non-violent Communication is a 9-day Youth Exchange that will bring together youth from the Netherlands, France, Spain, Bulgaria, and Italy to share their stories, experiences, and cultures, raising awareness of discrimination and of non-violent communication as a tool to talk about it in their communities. We would like to show that, although we are different, there should be no reason to discriminate against one another in society! Instead, there are a lot more reasons to collaborate and marvel at the beauty of our diversity. This youth exchange aims to improve participants' cultural awareness and self-expression. Throughout the project, they will work with theater and performance, as well as NVC methods, to share their personal stories or those of their community. The participants' ideas will gradually shape into a performance that we will present to local youth in Poussan.
Activities
Type of Activity: KA1 Erasmus plus Youth Exchange;
Venue: Catfarm, Poussan, France;
Planned Dates: 1-9 November 2019 (excluding 2 travel days);
Countries involved: The Netherlands, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Italy.
The participants in the youth exchange are 25 motivated young people aged 14 to 25. For this project, the youth will come from different backgrounds, but what unites them is their interest in the topic and their desire to make a change in their communities.
We have preliminarily agreed on the profile of the participants we expect to choose for this youth exchange:
- Motivated to participate;
- Have no or very little experience of participating in international youth exchanges;
- Interest in the topic and eagerness to experiment with gardening and growing one's own food;
- eager to share their food cultures and exchange with other participants;
- Interested in developing competencies such as intercultural competence, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, and social and civic competencies.
Impact
The project is designed to impact not only the group of young people but also a wide range of stakeholders and the wider public.
The participants will learn about various positive attitudes and receive practical recommendations for implementing them in daily life, even beyond the youth exchange.
The project will impact the Catfarm community and also the local community in Poussan, which is rarely exposed to internationals and different cultures. We will invite locals to our events and show them our cultural cuisines.
In addition, we will organise and invite local youth to our final event/performance.
In addition, we want to develop practices to impact other youth exchanges organised within Erasmus+ to encourage responsible travel and low CO2 emissions. We are developing a white paper on "Zero CO2," and this youth exchange will serve as a model to showcase what is possible and what we recommend to make an Erasmus+ youth exchange sustainable and environmentally friendly.
We expect this impact to occur not only locally during the exchange but also in the participants' communities and internationally. We expect the youth from this youth exchange to organise and create new youth exchanges with other European countries.
Coordinator: Stichting Adventures of the Valparaiso
• Start date 01-08-2019 • End date 31-03-2020
• Asociación de los Estados Generales de los Estudiantes de Europa - Burgos 🇪🇸 Spain • Catfarm Education 🇫🇷 France • SDRUZHENIE WALK TOGETHER 🇧🇬 Bulgaria • Twoplustwo 🇮🇹 Italy
2019-2-NL02-KA105-002593