“Boosting Inclusion Through Youth Work”
On the 1 of September of 2022, a group of 28 youth participants (including our SIR representatives) arrived in South Italy in the town called Tropea to learn, promote and create inclusion.
The project is called “Boosting Inclusion Through Youth Work” (B.I.T.Y.W.) and it lasted an entire week. During this week the participants sleep together, eat together, learn together, have fun together.
While they were doing this they spend the days learning and creating projects and actions about including refugees, migrants in local youth work activities. Doing this, they shared intercultural values and precious information about their country’s situation and emigration state.
The European countries that were present in this project were: Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Germany, Greece, France, Poland, Italy and Denmark. Together they learned more about their own country and shared that information with the rest of the participants, while the organizers gave inputs about social, inclusion, refugee state, and many more important information.
Day by Day.
On the first day, the activities were focused on ice breaking, team building, learning about Tropea and Italian culture, and together, the participants explored the city and made bonds. When the night arrived all the youth got together for a cultural night where they shared their traditional food, costumes, dances, rituals and national history.
On the second day the issue about immigration and social inclusion was brought up and the group was divided into teams to present different issues and how Europe should solve them. It was an intense but very rich discussion that took an entire morning. For the afternoon each country prepared their own presentation about their country’s emigration situation and created dynamics so they could show it on the next day at a public event organized by High on Life for the community.
On the third day the participants talked about stereotypes and had fun while they learned more about the culture of their continent neighbors. For the afternoon they went to a conference room where they did the presentations that were prepared the day before, the country workshops
On the fourth day, to create inclusion, the group started to prepare an event to create inclusion with locals from Tropea. They were divided in 3 teams: the first one was logistics and they were responsible to buy and making sure that every activity could be done; the second team was promoting, and they were responsible to advertise the event and creating billboards and expand the word; finally the third team was responsible to plan the activities that were going to happen. In the afternoon the participants went to the beach to implement the activities that they prepared. They learned about the community and about failure and success strategies for this kind of thematic.
On the fifth day the participants had a different study visit to local NGOs and Refugees centers.
On the last day of the project, they prepared a dissemination strategy so they could share all the amazing experiences that they had.
Interview with a participant
Name of the participant: Joana Silveira
Country: Portugal
1- How did you discover Erasmus + and this project?
I was invited by a friend that had already done a volunteer project with ESC in Jordan
2- How was your first impression when you arrived?
My first impression was that everyone from all countries was very committed to finding out about the other countries’ cultures. As the days went by those first impressions were fulfilled.
3- What do you think it’s the most important thing that you brought out with you when the project ended
I bring home with me memories of amazing days in Italy but also a great knowledge about some situations related to the refugee topic that I had no idea about.
4- Tell us about something unique that you experienced or learnt.
I learned that, as we have our life’s guaranteed, there’s a lot of people near us and all around the world that have their life’s changing every single day not by choice and they have to live with it
5- How can the European Union promote inclusion?
Doing projects as such, raising awareness for the project, we as young people will come back to our home country’s to spread the word and put it in practise
