Youth Exchange, Palermo, Italy. 27/12/2013 – 5/01/2014

Group of active young people (Ninia Pataraia, Gio Kavtaradze, Anna Bagbaia, Shota Pipia and the leader of the group: Lika Raphava) from Youth Association DRONI participated in Youth Exchange held in Palermo, Italy from 27th December 2013 to 5th January 2014. There were six countries involved in this project: Italy, Georgia, Estonia, Armenia, Ukraine, and Iceland.
The aim of this youth exchange was to promote active citizenship and European awareness with special focus on new EU program for youth ERASMUS+ https://www.facebook.com/ProgrammeErasmusPlus . This project was interesting and useful experience for the whole group, as within the intercultural dialogue we discussed and exchanged past experience in YiA projects. We also exchanged ideas and perceptions about EU, discussing and drafting concrete proposals for new youth projects which will run from 2014.

The concrete result of the youth exchange is a video created by us which contains suggestions and proposals for new European youth programs.
At the last day of the project we also made a promotional flash mob for Erasmus plus in the city center and we delivered the Erasmus plus flyers to the local youth people. We tried to give the information about new youth possibilities for local youngsters.
Except discussing YiA program and promotion of Erasmus Plus, one of the most important parts of this Youth Exchange was thematic national evenings of participant countries in particular focusing on Christmas. During the project, six different countries including Georgia performed for national night and presented Christmas traditions, national songs and dances. During national nights each country had short lessons for their languages or typical gestures which were very interesting to remind.
The project was definitely benefiting to us as youth workers. Actually that was the last chance for 2013 to participate in YiA program and was sum up of the whole year.
Let’s hope that the new EU project for youth people will give us more opportunities to enhance our skills as youth workers, to be able to share and get more experience in different youth fields.

Youth in Action Training course, 10-19 January, 2014

Chisinau, Moldova

Youth activists, youth workers, youth leaders and multipliers from 8 different countries (Belarus, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine) came together in Chisinau, Moldova to explore the concept of European Citizenship and identify ways how to promote it among a larger number of young people in our own countries. 9 days international training course’s main topic was “European Citizenship: Understanding and Acting Creatively”.
Training course had a base in Chisinau, Moldova and all the activities had done there, we summarise Youth in Action program and deeply discussed Erasmus+. We also visited sightseeing in Chisinau –Capital of Moldova during City Rally activity and had excursion in countryside, where we visited Curchi Monastery, several churches and some historical places near Curchi monastery, also had so delicious dinner in the village with traditional meals. It was so exciting and amazing trip with full of positive emotions.
Project Objectives were:
• Sharing knowledge and experience on previous projects that have
been implemented by various organizations in partner countries.
• Learn how to write project proposals and design joint project ideas on European citizenship for future development of our beloved East-West-East network.
• Get practical tools to spread the values of European citizenship beyond training and strengthen the East-West-East network by planning new projects.

During this project the participants were divided in different types of several groups, also had energisers, brainstorming sessions, active discussion and experience sharing, work in small groups and interactive presentations of the work results, role-plays and simulations, using open space technique for project development performances and exercise’s. Some of the activities were facilitating by group leader’s , also by Georgian group leader, Working in the groups was very interesting and productive; Group members got on each other well; We had a team reflections in different ways after sessions in the evening and final evaluation.
During the project we visited many interesting places, sightseeing of Moldova and also had meetings with non-governmental organizations and governmental institutions. We were visited Moldavian Diaspora department which especially supports Moldavian youth abroad, Eastern Eurasia partnership foundation in Moldova and in the evening meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs in Parliament of Moldova. We also visited main cathedral of Chisinau, Stefan Cel Mare park and famous people monuments “Pushkin’s Park”.
We also learnt culture, cuisine and traditions of other participant countries and we can say that there was intercultural dialogue between us. Intercultural evening was really so interesting, amazing and full of fun, positive emotions and different kind of interesting activities. For sure, we had Moldavian traditional dinner during the countryside excursion with Moldavian dishes, meals and wine.

We can say, that this project was definitely very successful for Georgian team, with amazing and unforgettable memories, we got new friends, future potential partners for follow up process, improve our language skills, developed our presentation, communication skills, gain new international level experience and knowledge connected with our TC’s topic and had a nice time together.
During the training course we lived in Chisinau, in the “Funky Mamaliga”.