Youth Centre Villa Elba is supporting a plan that a Finnish youth group from Middle Osthrobothnia and our partner organisations together with their national youth groups are going to realize a youth exchange. This youth exchange gathers together 30 young people with their leaders from six European countries. The youth exchange takes place in Kokkola, Finland from 2nd to 9th January 2015 and it lasts for 8 days ( travel days included). An advance planning visit will be organised in 3 months before in October. In today’s world it is highly important that one gets along with different kind of people. Multiculturalism can be found everywhere, and people can benefit a lot from international experiences for their personal and professional life. Our young people feel that to be able to co-operate with other people it is important to have self awareness and knowledge about one´s cultural behaviour in relation to other people and countries. Being aware of yourself and values that you stand for is a beginning to start growing respect and understanding towards other people. The theme of this youth exchange is multiculturalism . The theme will be handled through workshops that will be planned, implemented and conducted by youngsters themselves. The aim is that these young people will learn more about different religions and belief systems that impact on how we see life. Through self awareness we recognise stereotypes and racisim and as we know where racism comes from we may start fighting against it. Knowing how the media works we may start using it for our own means. The aim is that the participants will spread their learning results in their local communities and their personal life among new youngsters. The objective of the youth exchange is that young people share their world views among each others. Together we will discover different kind of belief systems that impact on our values. At the end this exchange the youngsters will make photos and posters about the workshop results, which will be reproduced in the partner countries. In this project the youngsters will hopefully realise how diverse group of people we Europeans are. There are also many non-European nationalities living in European countries believing in different kind of realities, and we want to increase these youngster´s understanding for different and create asoidarity among these youngster, that they will continue to disseminate among new youngsters. Mutual understanding, tolerance, solidarity and fight against racism is something we will include in all activities what we´ll make during our youth exchange. Being European citizen – accepting multicultural Europe, learning to respect and understand the diversity of different cultures is very important aspect for us. Participants will develop the following competencies: - social and civic competencies through workshops , discussions and simulations - creativity and innovation through the development of knowledge and skills acquired during the exchange - language skills through communicating in foreign language through participation in the youth exchange conducted in English - project management skills as the youngsters are planning the project activities Participants will learn : - what is a worldwiev and how does it impact our behaviour and attitude - how to grow a sense of self awareness - what is racism - how to fight against racism - how to use media for our own means - how to be involved in a project work - how to lead a task in a project As working methods we will use non-formal learning; lectures, games, group-work, discussions, individual work and workshops; photo, drawing, music, dancing, writing