EU Youth in Action (YIA) Programs Action 1.3 Youth and Democracy Projects Project Title: Young Promoters of Participation Project Coordinator: Association of Peace Project Agreement Number: IT-13-60-2011-R5 Project Budget: 39,396.33 € Total Grant received from Italian NA: 27,861.33
Project Summary:
The project will be implemented in nine months from 1/02/2012 to 31/10/2012 and will involve Turkey and Italy.
The objective of the project is to strengthen the active participation of young people in the democratic life stimulating them to point out positive and negative aspects of decisional processes and create some proposals to improve them, starting from youngsters needs and also considering the prevention and nonviolent management of conflicts, that is a very important instrument, especially in multicultural societies, as the European ones.
The project will target twenty-four young people. In Italy will be involved twelve young from a middle and a high class, in Turkey, instead twelve young from a Youth and Sports Club and from a Ngo’s.
During the first part of the activity the young people will know and have experience of the main concepts of participation, decision-making in democracy and nonviolent conflict resolution in the two countries, also interviewing local institutions, associations and youth consultation bodies. In the second part the young people, using consensus method, will choose which boys and girls (twelve for Turkey and also for Italy)will participate in a one-week meeting in Italy. In this period the young participants will organize an information campaign on a critical aspect of democratic society observed, also focusing on what can be done to enable young people to participate and make their voice heard. The young will exchange impressions, define together themes and tools, get more information and materials for the campaign, meeting other authorities, associations and youth bodies. Then they will present the campaign to the public and the local institutions, both in Italy and Turkey.
The themes that this project meets are: the promotion of young participation in the civic life of the community through volunteering activities, the knowledge and the experience of democratic principles and processes, the development of personal abilities of dialogue and tolerance towards differences, in order to create an inclusive society.
In the first phase informal tools will be used to introduce the main concepts of the project and facilitate creativity, communication and cooperation between youngsters: participatory learning, simulations, role games, theatre of the Oppressed and Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters (AIE).However it is very important that the young people can decide together the methodology based on identified needs: they will choose how set up interviews with civil society’s organs, representatives of institutions and with experts of democratic processes, how to create the information campaign, using the different tools(video, theatre, text materials) finally how to manage the week(for example identifying games, sports and films on peace and democracy).