EU Grant: 31.525,85 EUR
Applicant: YOUTH CENTRE VILLA ELBA (FINLAND)
Partners from ENYC:
SYSTEM AND GENERATION ASSOCIATION (TURKEY)
- Start: 01-10-2014
- End: 31-01-2015
- Project Reference: 2014-2-FI01-KA105-000758
- Programme: Erasmus+
- Key Action: Learning Mobility of Individuals
- Action Type: Youth mobility
The aim of the project “”Northern Lights”” was to gather young people with fewer opportunities to live and work together in a multicultural group for one month. Youth Centre Villa Elba hosted 13 volunteers from Portugal, Spain, Austria, and Turkey.
The project was meant for the young people with fewer opportunities. Our focus was on young people who are minorities / migrants, unemployed / low salaries, temporary jobs, lack of self-confidence, people who have never traveled, low education and school drop outs, learning difficulties, from disadvantaged areas, geographical isolation and rural areas, low or no English skills, health issues or financial problems. The volunteers was young people who don’t have a lot of chances to travel and gain international experiences.
This project offered young people a chance for participation, to learn to cooperate in a multicultural team and to develop their personal competences like language skills, organisational skills and also to learn new working methods.
Further, the project gave the young people new experiences and skills, and this can improve their opportunities at the labour market in their home countries and therefore, the projects target youth unemployment.
The volunteers got given tasks, tools and support but an important aspect is that the young people’s ideas and thoughts were be encouraged and taken into consideration in their daily work tasks. This empowered the young people’s creativity and entrepreneurship.
First week of the project was on-arrival training in Youth Centre Villa Elba. During the 3 working weeks the participants will had a chance to try out different kind of work: horse stables, forest work and building special path with wheelchair access, cleaning tasks, working in Villa Elbas nature school, etc. The volunteers helped the staff of Villa Elba with Christmas preparations and organizing Elf happenings for families.
Besides the work the group did cultural visits, learn house holding tasks and to live together in a multicultural environment. The volunteers were encouraged to try different kind of activities (sport, culture etc.) on their free time. The volunteers were responsible for taking care of the house where they lived and also to prepared meals. They were supported by a social worker and support persons.
The most important impact of this project was to support youngsters in Europe to get more experience and skills to find work or get to school after the EVS project. By realizing this project we expect, that the participants became more self-confident and they learned to take responsibility more for themselves and others. They had a chance to develop their social skills, language skills and broaden their picture of the world.
By getting to know EVS volunteers local youngsters in Finland are also going to get information about European Voluntary Service and Erasmus+ program.
For more details, please access the link HERE.