From June 5th till June 13th there took place an exchange project in Armenia named Art Bridge to Tolerance. It took place in Dilijan and Yerevan. The organizer of the project was “Future in Our Hands” Youth NGO together with “Pokhara” association from Spain, “Don Bosco YouthNet” from the Netherlands and “Educatio” from Ukraine.
The central theme of this youth exchange was problems of youngsters with fewer opportunities and art as a tool to raise up these problems. During the exchange the young participants had the opportunity to learn, see and explore different types of art, craft, photography, music, dance and address these problems through such tools.
Other goal was to break prejudices between young people about religions, racism, cultures and habits and to develop tolerance towards the youngsters with fewer opportunities. To make them aware of multicultural Europe and to have intercultural learning on the way of exchange of experiences.
Another important aim of the program was to establish mutual understanding and friendship between representatives of the participating countries. During these days the participants learned a lot of new dances and songs as well as exchanged their experience in these sphere because some them were professional singers and dancers.
During the project there were workshops according to the topics: Prejudice, stereotypes, hate speech, European values. The participants were shared into international groups and presented to the others their art work, where they shared their own approach to that very topic.
The schedule of the project embraced not only wide range of dance, music and art workshops but also a lot of fun activities and energizers to make the learning process also very interesting. What is important is that the project paid much attention to the interests of participants. As a result they were divided into groups according to their preferences of dance. So the participants learned and at the same time had a lot of fun.
The outcome of successful cooperation of youngsters was presented to public with a flashmob of dances and songs containing elements of different national dances on the 12th of June at 18:00 in Northern Avenue. Local youngsters also joined to the Erasmus+ promotional flashmob.
All in all, the project was a great opportunity for the participants to learn a lot of things from their new friends, why not new language and a lot things about cultural peculiarities of other nations and breake the prejudices among them.
The exchange program, which was funded by Erasmus+ project was organized by Future in Our Hands NGO in Armenia and “ Don Bosco YouthNet ” in the Netherlands
The nice rest of the participants, the tasty food and the comfortable accommodation was provided by the hotel Art Guest House in Dilijan and JR’s house in Yerevan.
We’d like to thank all who made this project happen.
- Don Bosco Nederland-Applicant
- Educatio Ukraine- Sending organization
- Pokhara Association-Sending organization
Dance groups who joined us:
- Salsa Viva Dance School
- YB Dance Studio
- Varq Hayots
As well as:
- Yerevan Municipality for the permission
- Deem Communications for providing materials (EU banner,flags,etc..)
- La Piazza Café Restaurant for providing electricity for the flashmob
- And all the volunteers involved into realization of the project.
The project was hosted in Armenia by “Future in Our Hands ” Youth NGO
The project was funded by Dutch National Agency.
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