Sight Firs
Start date: Aug 1, 2015,
End date: Oct 31, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
The Hungarian, German and French Districts of Lions Clubs International – a global charity organization – has decided to organize a youth exchange project, called „Sight First”. The partner organizations have already cooperated in various international charity projects and have several years of experience organizing youth exchange projects.
The aim of the „Sight First ” project is to introduce different aspects of disabled people to the participants in the age of 18-26. We would like to emphasize that people with disabilities are also valuable parts of our society. In our experience young people relatively rarely meet disabled people. This is why they often have preconceptions and stereotypes. The deeper understanding of the situation of disabled people can make the participants more empathetic and accepting. This way they also help the integration of disabled people in an indirect way. In the same time they gain valuable experiences on the fields of volunteering, mobility, and interculturality.
All the activities of the project are based on nonformal learning methods. We organize panel conversations and workshops, where the participants will have a chance to work in small and mixed teams, they can express they opinions, the feelings. They can get first hand information from our disabled guests. Most of the activities are “learning by doing” Which means that the participants can learn something while trying or actively experiencing it.
In the first part of the project week the participants will get to know the everyday life of disabled people, focusing on their difficulties and successes. This part involves people with different kind of disabilities.
However in the second part we will focus on blind people and people with seeing disorders. The participants will get familiar with the traditional and modern equipment that help blind people. They can also try Goalball, the Paralympic game of blind people. Szilvia Agárdi, a 21 years old singer, will make an interactive presentation, where the participants can try different situations blindfolded, and experience the lack of vision. We devote a whole day to introduce the training of guide dogs and we make an excursion with a group of blind people with guide dogs. In a charity activity we will collect dog food donations for a guide dog training center. This way the participants can be part of a real volunteer activity.
We aim to develop the intercultural, social, and entrepreneurial skills and competences of the participants. In an intercultural atmosphere they will communicate in a foreign language and spend a longer period with young people from different countries. This way the can better accept people with different cultural background and they can adopt better to new situations, encouraging European mobility.
Cooperation, tolerance, social inclusion, acceptance and empathy are the most important social competences that will develop.
We also put an emphasis on entrepreneurial competences as flexibility or adoptability. We will organize teamwork involving disabled people. The participants will learn how to tolerate disabled collages and they will more likely hire disabled employees at their own enterprises.
We would like to introduce the opportunities laying in volunteer work. We would like to highlight the double positive effect of volunteering, as while we help others our own personality and competences are greatly improving as well.
We will document the results and achievement of the project in detail. We will use YoutPass certificate. The partner organizations are responsible for communicating the achievements to the media. They will also support the participants, to make presentations about the project in their schools and on other forums of their local community. This way they will share their experiences, impressions during the project and they can also promote the opportunities of Erasmus+ Programme.