"Volunteer for Social Inclusion" - 16-23.10.2022 - Florida, Sweden
The period from 16 to 23rd October, was a unique learning experience and a great opportunity for 56 motivated young people coming from 7 countries of Europe: Sweden, North Macedonia, Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Poland and Slovakia to be part of the youth exchange “Volunteer for social inclusion” with an aim to dive deeper into the topic of volunteerism and explore its power for tackling social inclusion.
Participants gathered in Sweden and through different non-formal working methods explored the topic of volunteerism, shared their volunteering experiences and got themselves familiar with the ESC program. Participants were exploring all the benefits of volunteering and supporting social inclusion through it.
The sessions were designed in order to engage participants to interact, boost their creativity and critical thinking skills and develop/improve some competencies, such as organisation and communication skills, digital competence, teamwork and leadership skills etc.
The youth exchange “Volunteering for social inclusion” also focused on the intercultural dimension, thus each night, participants had an opportunity to organize intercultural nights and present their countries, dance some traditional dances, taste traditional food, learn some words in foreign languages etc.
Participants improved their digital skills as well, namely, they worked on creating a practical online booklet with tips, articles, resources on volunteering in English and content for the project website and social media;
The next challenge that participants will take will be the implementation of voluntary initiatives in their communities in order to tackle some issues relevant to them and their peers.
Check our Booklet!
Poetic thought
In a manner of non-formal learning, here is one pretty non–formal article. Floda – it’s hard to find perfect words to describe this magical place. Maybe, we will be able to talk about it later, when our lips defrost and recover from wild Scandinavian weather. When our eyes met for the first time in the cold wind in front of the bus station, little did we know, that it is going to be even colder. And we were not wrong. As this week was passing by, we lost a few things, but we gained even more. We got rid of the fear of public speaking, and we lost the track of time, not even talking about our mugs and slippers. On the other hand, we gained different kinds of knowledge about other cultures during intercultural nights, about our volunteering opportunities, and how can we apply all of this once we are back home. We also made some long-lasting friendships, because who does not want to spend warm summer in Rome, got it? So, in case if you are still doubting what to do next in your life, AND you have a feeling that you are lost, just try to apply for this type of project. You will spend a week with people, who are just as lost as you, and you will have the opportunity to figure it out altogether.
Floda has flooded us with knowledge
One week ago, we arrived at this magical place, that we would have never visited if it was not for the Erasmus plus project. Those seven days, that we spent here, were enough to turn a bunch of strangers into a perfectly working group of multinational friends, where the barriers even between the shyest people melted. Since the very start, we played games that made us come out of our comfort zones, which many of us actually enjoyed. If it overwhelmed someone, the breaks were more than enough to relax and to get ready for other lessons of non-formal education. Our weak parts, which we carefully kept secret from everyone, were directly exposed to people from many countries and the space for improvement was gigantic.
The project was about volunteering for social inclusion. The main goal of our facilitators was to spread the knowledge they have among us participants, which we would later choose to spread or not spread further. They did so by making us work in groups, through innovative methods of learning that were both amusing and informative.
They kept making us figure out the examples of volunteerism, its advantages, impact on people's lives and they also wanted to hear about the volunteering situation in our countries, again to spread the knowledge further and to create a chain reaction.
The facilitators did a great thing, they decided to connect their love for volunteering and teaching young people to deliver absolutely perfect performance in explaining such a subject. The most memorable will probably be the energizers, which, in fact, really made us more energetic and optimistic about the upcoming workshop.
At the end of the project, we were making plans for using abilities we gained during youth exchange and implementing them in our local communities. We also learned a lot about each other's culture during intercultural nights, so that our workshops weren't just about hard work.
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