"Green Europe: it starts from you!", our first Youth Exchange, took place from 27/7 to 3/8 2013 in Novoli (Lecce,Italy) and it involved 23 young people from 4 European Countries, in one full week of activities.
The project followed the rules of non-formal education, overall learning by doing and sharing competences. All the workshops were followed by funny and important moments of integration of participants between themselves, thanks to energizers, ice-breaking and team building games and thanks to the funniest moments: the intercultural evening and the cultural nights, in which the participants made their best showing their culture and their traditions. We started with the presentation of the activities and the objective and presenting GreenRope. Then, was the turn of the presentation of each participant. They spoke about their experiences, their skills and their sending associations. To make them understand what we were going to do we explained what is “Youth in Action” and the importance of YouthPasses. The day after, we started with concrete activities about the topics. We started speaking about what is sustainable development and what the world is going to do about it. The participants could create their Millenium Development Goals and then we debated about them. Learning by doing, so, we met in Lecce one expert, owner of the little shop “Bottega del Mondo”, of Fair-Trade and Slowfood that teached us what are these topics and involved us in really deeply reflexions. “Generation Awake!”, the most important programme of EU for the sustainable development day by day has been analyzed by the participants that could see and understand what is the Awake Consumption Guide and what is their impact on the Planet day by day. To watch with their own eyes why our Planet needs a sustainable development we showed them the great documentary “Home” that left the most part of them without words. After the workshop on biodiversity made by Stefano Bellomo, responsable of GreenRope, that was focused overall on the critical situation of our oceans and about key species in our seas like dolphins (because of a previous project of GreenRope in the Ionian sea), sharks and turtles, the participants have been involved in one excited moment: they visited the sea turtle recovering center of Rauccio, in which, they could learn what is the human impact on these so important animals next to the extinction and what we could do for them. It’s not finished because the 20 young people went to Rabbit Island, one natural protected area in Porto Cesareo (Lecce) in which they meet the experts of Legambiente that spoke about the importance of the protection of natural treasures. The work of the participants has been really important because they learned a lot and because they have been the responsable of the visibility of the projects, writing the articles that you will read and they have been the protagonists of the amazing flashmob made in Porto Cesareo between a lot of people and tourists that joined us.
One of the most important things for GreenRope staff was to make them understand that, in life, everything is possible if you believe in your passion and in your dreams and that we can build our future. For this reason we started to work with them about some their ideas of future projects and, we are sure that some of them will be realized soon in their own countries with our help.
The project followed the rules of non-formal education, overall learning by doing and sharing competences. All the workshops were followed by funny and important moments of integration of participants between themselves, thanks to energizers, ice-breaking and team building games and thanks to the funniest moments: the intercultural evening and the cultural nights, in which the participants made their best showing their culture and their traditions. We started with the presentation of the activities and the objective and presenting GreenRope. Then, was the turn of the presentation of each participant. They spoke about their experiences, their skills and their sending associations. To make them understand what we were going to do we explained what is “Youth in Action” and the importance of YouthPasses. The day after, we started with concrete activities about the topics. We started speaking about what is sustainable development and what the world is going to do about it. The participants could create their Millenium Development Goals and then we debated about them. Learning by doing, so, we met in Lecce one expert, owner of the little shop “Bottega del Mondo”, of Fair-Trade and Slowfood that teached us what are these topics and involved us in really deeply reflexions. “Generation Awake!”, the most important programme of EU for the sustainable development day by day has been analyzed by the participants that could see and understand what is the Awake Consumption Guide and what is their impact on the Planet day by day. To watch with their own eyes why our Planet needs a sustainable development we showed them the great documentary “Home” that left the most part of them without words. After the workshop on biodiversity made by Stefano Bellomo, responsable of GreenRope, that was focused overall on the critical situation of our oceans and about key species in our seas like dolphins (because of a previous project of GreenRope in the Ionian sea), sharks and turtles, the participants have been involved in one excited moment: they visited the sea turtle recovering center of Rauccio, in which, they could learn what is the human impact on these so important animals next to the extinction and what we could do for them. It’s not finished because the 20 young people went to Rabbit Island, one natural protected area in Porto Cesareo (Lecce) in which they meet the experts of Legambiente that spoke about the importance of the protection of natural treasures. The work of the participants has been really important because they learned a lot and because they have been the responsable of the visibility of the projects, writing the articles that you will read and they have been the protagonists of the amazing flashmob made in Porto Cesareo between a lot of people and tourists that joined us.
One of the most important things for GreenRope staff was to make them understand that, in life, everything is possible if you believe in your passion and in your dreams and that we can build our future. For this reason we started to work with them about some their ideas of future projects and, we are sure that some of them will be realized soon in their own countries with our help.
About our project from Web-Journals and Blogs:
http://www.paisemiu.com/index.php/ambiente/753-27-luglio-3-agosto-green-europe-un-progetto-che-sa-di-liberta#.UvYlmfl5Mue
http://www.thenaturejotter.com/2014/02/scambi-interculturali-green-europe-it.html
http://rubensantos.co.vu/post/70525483955
http://ourprettylittleplanet.blogspot.it/p/links.html
