JUST BREATHE
Start date: Jun 17, 2014,
End date: Apr 16, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
We have organized this youth exchange's project from 3 to 14 August 2014 in order to foster mutual understanding between European people and offer them the opportunity to be aware about environmental topics and explore an environmental experience during 12 days.
Nowadays, a lot of problematics about environment are rising up. We need to think, experiment, live new manners to behave in/with our environment in order to open our minds about these questions.
Young people are holding the future in their hands and they need to share, discover, confront their ideas with other young people in order to understand, live and act on/in/with their environment and try to find out better ways to live.
Our main objectives were focused on the promotion of healthy behaviours through practising sports and outdoor activities, using environmental activities as social inclusion and linking activities and environmental issues.
We also aimed to stimulate responsible citizenship through learning by doing, learning by sharing daily life.
42 persons have participated in this project, a team of 8 facilitators and 34 youngsters aged of 15/18 years old.
Most of them had never participated in such a meeting before: some of them have never been abroad, never experimented a foreign experience out of their family context and such an intercultural approach of life.
As activities, we have organized preparation of intercultural meeting, reflections' times on stereotypes, several meetings for proposition of activities, and an APV in July during 3 days.
During the exchange, we set up outdoor activities such as hiking, climbing, catamaran, bike hiking, sand yachting and swimming.
We planned cultural visits: Museum of performing arts, practice of traditional Britain games.
As intercultural activities, each country has organized a dinner, presenting its culture and its country through dance and music, skits. We developed games on languages, cooperation and cohesion games.
Also daily life in camping and cooking were considered as main activities.
Participants learned how to adapt themselves, that languages are an important key to communicate and that English is useful.
They had to learn, how to cooperate, to work in an international group, to be in a supporting behavior and share daily tasks. Participants have been aware of their similarities, going beyond differences, different colours of skin, nationalities, social backgrounds. The diversity and stereotypes according to other nationalities, cultures were overcome at the end.
The whole group have experimented camping life, how to set up tents, how to cook, how to live together in a multicultural group.
They want to stay in contact, to participate in other projects like this one, they have spoken about this project to their friends and relatives.
The Polish group is planning to host a new project in 2015.