We often hear the words “I want to see some changes”, “This has to be changed!” but the question is, who has to take the initiative? Who makes those changes? Who, if not us-the youth!
We have always had the aim to give the youth a platform to gather and to share their personal experiences, find solutions, unite over the same goal- to create the road to the change!
The road to the change may be hard, but through unity, empowerment and dedication we can totally achieve it.
Youth Exchange “Road to the change” is one of the initiatives we, as youth organization, take.
The aim of our project is to address the problems of youngsters with fewer opportunities through art/photo shooting, dance, music and social advertisements. During the project we are planning to work closely with social educators from partner organisations who are involved in work with youngsters with fewer opportunities such as immigrants, refugees and the ones having social and educational problems.
Youngsters from the participants countries: Armenia, UK, Croatia, Bulgaria, Poland and Spain will address topics such as Tolerance, Hate Speech, Prejudice, Stereotypes, European Values through art (dance, music, photo, video graphics art (creation of social advertisements).
We believe that only by raising these questions, and starting a conversation, can we achieve the so desired “CHANGE”.
In order to provide possibly the best experience for the participating youth we had an APV (Advance Planning Meeting) for the project from the 1st to the 4th of December.
Experience shows that discussing the details, such as agenda of the project, the venue, the methodology and activities with the partner countries results to a much quality, more productive and smooth project.
Leaders from each participating country have arrived in Yerevan on the first of December and the productive four days started.
According to our tradition we started by getting to know each other games in order to have much better communication, understand each others’ views and backgrounds. Later we had an NGO fair among ourselves in order to ensure follow up collaborations, which can only happen if we present the missions and the objectives of our organizations,
Later on it was much easier and much more fun to spend our free time together, getting to know each other on a personal level.
During one of the discussions we had a brilliant idea to have our UK partner Rajesh, who’s a qualified trainer, mentor and a teacher, as a guest host in our English speaking club “English Without Barriers” which was a huge success, and a great experience both for our dear partner, and out participants.
During the APV we checked out the venue which is in Dilijan, and also had the chance to explore the city, visit Sevanavank, try traditional dish called “Khapama”, and see some sight-seeings of the capital-Yerevan.
Everyone seemed to have enjoyed this short trip, and are showing a huge excitement in coming back for the actual project. For the farewell party we had Armenian traditional “Khorovats”.
.The project will take place in May of 2020, and thanks to our collaborative effort, we are going to create the road to the change!
