Erasmus+ Capacity Building youth – Western Balkans
Funded by: Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA)
Project duration: 01/01/2017 – 30/09/2017
Activity dates: 04/04/2017 – 12/04/2017
Summary:
In Europe, there are serious issues with intercultural dialogue and acceptance of diversity due to wars’ and economic migrations towards the EU. In our work for intercultural acceptance we’ve noticed how quite some values disappear from the mind-set of our beneficiaries when there is “important” sport competition event and when they take sides in opposite fan groups that show strong animosity towards each other. Then we can see certain negative behaviour shown by the same beneficiaries that are usually positive and accepting different individuals around them in regular youth work activities. Until youth work is separated from sport, we will not be able to reach as good results as possible for intercultural acceptance in our communities. We need to practice more the healthy competition and teamwork in sports among our beneficiaries. This project responds to those needs and aims to encourage our youth workers to develop more youth sport work projects that will explore and extract all the possible positive aspects of sports for developing consistent positive intercultural acceptance among our beneficiaries.
There was no similar opportunity yet organised – a PBA where interested organisations could discuss the alarming situation in Europe nowadays (when it comes to intolerance, discrimination, exclusion, etc.) and try to find solutions for it through developing youth SPORT work projects together.
The core activity of the project was – 8 days long partnership-building activity (PBA). It was organised in the youth hostel in Novi Sad, Serbia from 4th till 12th April 2017. Project gathered 35 participants, trainers and staff from 19 organisations and 15 countries (Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo*, Cyprus, Spain, Greece, Croatia, Italy, FYR Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Turkey). There were 14 young people with fewer opportunities.
The goals of this PBA were to develop capacity of youth workers and partners in Erasmus+ KA2 Western Balkans Youth Window and Sport strands and to establish partnerships for youth sport work projects tackling current issues of discrimination, marginalization and exclusion in Europe and diversity in general.
We expected from participants to be able to represent their sending organisations and enter into new partnerships and new project proposals during this partnership-building activity.
On European level, our project has as impact 8 newly initiated projects with possibility to include additional partners from other countries of Europe, as well.
Annex:
Video “Why youth SPORT work”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBB2_NHh-qw&t=9s
*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.