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Encounter of Cultures
Start date: Jan 1, 2016, End date: Dec 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Encounter of Cultures is a project where participants are City of Jyväskylä, Department of Youth Affairs, Finland (receiving and coordinating organisation) and Messzelátó Egyesület, Hungary (sending organisation). Project started in March 2016 and it ended in December 2016. During this period one volunteer, a girl from Hungary, worked in Jyväskylä. Encounter of cultures is a very topical theme in whole Europe right now. Main idea of this project was to make the city of Jyväskylä a little bit more tolerant city, where people are not afraid of diversity. They have current, relevant information about immigration, minorities, equality, tolerance and (anti-)racism. Jyväskylä has been a quite multicultural city for a long time, but lately attitudes, values and behaviour of citizen has changed in a bad way. Activities in this project were a youth house tour (No Hate, All Different, All Equal and other themes/campaigns), events, camps, trips, and youth work in youth centers. Some activities are free for everybody to join, most of them are aimed for young people (aged 10-20 years). Venues were public places, like youth centers and schools, some events were even held on the streets. Idea of this project was to get majority and minority or different kind of minorities to work together. Activities are easy to follow and take part, like dancing, cooking and playing games. Sending organisation prepared the volunteer before project started and helped her to book flight and train/buss tickets. Multicultural center organized Finnish language lessons and receiving organisation rest of things like residence, dining, tutor/mentor, pocket money, permits, working tasks etc. After the project sending organisation helped the volunteer to settle down to Hungary again. We hope that Jyväskylä is a more tolerant city as an impact of this project. Attitudes and values are chancing slowly and it it is difficult to make an indicator for those. People now have current and relevant knowledge instead of bad stereotypes. They aren`t afraid of differences and understand different kind of cultures/minorities more. Erasmus+ program is better known (youth workers, partners, young people). Volunteer got a lot of knowledge of professional youth work. Evaluation was done throughout the project. The volunteer ended up leaving Finland a month earlier than planned.
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