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Solidarity through Volunteerism
Start date: Jun 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

"Solidarity through Volunteerism" was a project, of which the main activity was a youth exchange with European and neighboring partner countries, organized in common by 6 organizations, in a joint effort to enhance our organizations' international dimension and cooperation, as well as strengthen our capacity building, by exchanging opinions and ideas on matters affecting the everyday lives of young people from different ethnic and social context. This was a 3 month's project, during which a youth exchange was held at Larnaka, Cyprus, during July 2015. Up to 54 Young people, from 6 organizations participated at the exchange. The organizations that participated were from Cyprus, Palestine, Lebanon, Finland, Portugal, and Russia. As the title suggests, the project focused on the ways to promote Solidarity through volunteerism, and consequently active participation and cooperation. Young people and children grow up in a society that is highly affected by the consequences of the most intense economical crisis of the last decades, along with that, most of the countries of the Middle East are affected by constant conflicts. This situation creates obstacles for young people to actively participate, locally and globally. It even creates indifference on what is going on in the rest of the world and alienation of young people toward being socially active. Therefore using the existing national network that our organizations have created over the year among young people, we have given the opportunity to 54 young people to actively participate in an exchange that has encouraged them to actively participate in their society, by promoting solidarity through volunteerism. More specifically the objectives of the project have been: to promote cooperation between the participating youth organizations; to promote solidarity by seeking practical ways through volunteerism and raise awareness on social, economic and political matters affecting the participating countries and consequently develop consciousness on international solidarity; to exchange good practices and experiences between the organizations in order to disseminate the gained knowledge and experience in their countries during and after the project period; to give space to young people to develop competences, express their opinion, work creatively, actively participate and create mutual understanding by accepting difference in culture, religion, language etc. All of the above were linked to the objectives of the Erasmus+ programme and this specific action. The working methods used during the exchange were based on non-formal, interactive and educational activities. The project's objectives were addressed through workshops during the exchange where participants have been able to give as well as receive knowledge. In addition to that the participants have presented their organizations, their countries culture and social situation as part of the learning process. Moreover, interactive games were used in order to make the learning process more fun and interesting for the participants, taking in mind their young age. There were also activities to prepare dissemination material (e.g. video on solidarity) and make suggestions for future activities. Other stakeholders were also involved in order to help and contribute to the programme, such as the Youth Board of Cyprus, with a presentation on volunteerism and the " Peoples network for social solidarity" in Cyrpus, with a presentation on examples of solidarity at national level. Finally the participants also had the opportunity to get to know Larnaka and promote the exchange in the local community. Evaluation sessions were daily in the programme in order to improve the quality of the project and at the end of the project evaluation was made by all the participating organizations. We believe that through this project the participants and youth organizations gained enough competences and knowledge, so as to work as multipliers of the project's results and implement follow-up activities in their own context, using their own network of cooperation with other organizations and in this way making an impact on local, national, European and international level. We have also disseminated the project by using mass media, social media and network of contacts nationally and internationally, in order to promote the materials produced from the exchange and the project in general. In conclusion, these kind of activities between Youth Organizations from different countries, offer each organization the knowledge and competences to implement other similar activities in the future, expanding even more their international network of cooperation in the youth field.

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