TC Project Creation in Sunseed
Training About Youth Exchanges for Sustainability,
1st to 5th of April 2019
Every year Europe becomes better connected through various institutions and programmes. One of them, called the Erasmus+, focuses on youth, mainly on exchanging knowledge through non-formal education outside of country borders.
Youth exchanges provide a safe environment for young people from 13 to 30 years old from different countries, where they exchange ideas and work on shared projects for a short period of time, usually between 5 and 21 days. Learning outcomes are later recognized through a Youthpass certificate or other.
Our youth networking event took place in an eco- community, called Sunseed Desert Technology in the south of Spain between 1st and 5th of April 2019 as an Erasmus+ project. The aim of the project was for youth workers to take initiative in planning and designing a youth exchange with main topics of ecovillages and sustainable way of life.
Our group consisted of 22 youth workers from Spain, Italy, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Greece, Serbia. Our trainers Dario and Stefanie lead us through the process of application and execution of a youth exchange with all its phases.
Project was created with the help of Yes to Sustainability, an initiative created by young youth leaders a few years ago in Denmark, mainly on topics of ecology and sustainability.
The daily schedule consisted of four working time frames. We started off with introduction to youth exchanges, to the community and to Erasmus+ projects. We started to think about what we wanted to do in an objective of a youth exchange or a project. We were presented the Youthpass platform and how it can benefit us on our dissemination. Slowly we started working in groups, where we gathered together based on our topics. Afterwards we went through different phases of the application project theoretically and then discussed them with our groups later practically.
We finished our week with lovely memories and new friendships with a symbolic planting of sunflowers and a night gathering to say our farewells.
Although our training was short, we learned a lot and we are going to be able to share our knowledge in the future with 4 new youth exchanges we plan to create.
