PRIORITIES OF THE CALL
 

1) Objectives - What do you want to do and why?

·          a) combating discrimination, racism and xenophobia by facilitating a dialogue and joint activities of young people from different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds with special emphasis on the integration of young people from minorities;

  This project mainly aims to achieve a better social climate for people from minorities, to raise awareness and understanding on ethnical matters among young people from the different countries in South Eastern Europe.

  The aim is to stimulate the integration of young people from the majorities and minorities by providing joint activities, through which they can fully understand each other’s culture, habits, traditions and thus to improve the social climate in the program countries.

  All the activities will be implemented by young people from regions with high percent of minorities. They will be representatives from both the majority and the minorities.

The objectives to fulfill the main issue are:

§         To develop skills to work in multicultural settings.

§         To reflect on work with young people, in relation to anti-oppressive and equal opportunity practice.

§         To explore issues, such as racism, prejudice, discrimination, equal opportunities, intolerance.

§         To provide a further opportunity to work on these issues & develop YOUTH projects.

§         To develop self-awareness, by providing space for reflection and the sharing of experiences.

§         To address ICL, its role in anti-racist work and the management of cultural risk or misunderstandings.

·          b) using sports and outdoor education as a tool for social integration and non-formal education with special emphasis on the inclusion of disabled young people.

2) Working methods - How do you want to go about it?
 

·          a) the innovative aspects of your project;

Bulgaria is a country which is accepted by everyone as an island of stability and peace in the SEE Region. This is the reason why we want to share our experience and model with our neighbouring countries. The extreme importance of the tasks we lay for the project inquires the participation of associations from Western Europe, which can be models with their practices, knowledge and know-how, as well as NGOs from the conflict countries. The organizations from Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia, which will take part in the project are not partnering organizations, but supporting ones. (Their representatives are not included in the budget of the activities).  The fact, that these countries are the most problematic one concerning minorities and exclusion, and the fact that this problem cannot be solved partially in some countries, but with joint actions in the whole region necessitates the support from organizations in these countries, which can spread the results and analyses there too.

Namely that is the innovative part in the project – to address these problems on such a high level in the whole region and yet taking much care of each separate specific need of the different minorities. Most of the different activities have been done before in the project countries, but never all of them united by a single cause – the combat against racism and discrimination.

The creation of the “Passport for Tolerance”, designed and written by youngsters themselves from different cultural and ethnic background in SEE Region seems to be a new way of thinking and acquaintances. The using of more than 7 languages and information about all the cultural heritage sites in the SEE Region is a new aspect in the area of Diversity and Tolerance in our common countries.

·          b) how you will involve young people in the preparation, implementation and follow up of the project and which other persons or groups may benefit from the project;

The main work team will consist mostly of young people. They will play an important role in the preparatory and evaluation meetings in the phases of preparation and follow up.

 In the phase of implementation of the project young people will participate in all the work meetings; they will help for the organization and implementation of the campaigns in each country; all the participants in the competitions will be young people aged 16-25. More than 200 youth leaders, volunteers and youth workers will take part directly in the activities of the project. They will lead the all the public awareness campaigns, competitions, info meetings.

·          c) how you will combine cooperation, training and information aspects in order to allow for a strong European dimension and an intensive learning process for participants;

The fact that the partnering organizations come from different European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and Romania) will help the participants learn more about multiethnical cooperation and team working. The organizations will collaborate in all the phases of the project to ensure the achievement of the planned results. The planned training courses where young people will learn a lot about ethnical, cultural and religious tolerance will help for the development of cooperation and the exchange of important information among participants and organizations. During the campaigns in the separate countries and at the seminars information on discrimination, racism and xenophobia will be collected. This will help the organizers find better and more efficient ways to fight these phenomena and solve the problems connected to them.

·          d) how you will ensure high visibility of your activities;

The project has clear indications for realizability which are easily traceable. Safe for that all the campaigns during the implementation of the project will be covered by local media and open to everybody who is interested in them.

  In our previous projects we have worked in close cooperation with the mass-media and they have covered all our activities. In the project countries there is still a lack of efficient and useful activities organized by and for young people, so the TVs and newspapers are looking for such initiatives, and we are sure that they will help us with their popularization.

The high visibility is also ensured by the type of the activities themselves. All of them are not aimed at small groups, but will be open to everyone, so the society can observe what is happening and even to actively take part.

The establishment of the web-site in the first part of the project will allow us to spread all the documentations, results from competitions, info about the future seminars and courses, innovations and good practices to the public and any potential beneficiary from the youth field.

We will also use the support of the initiative of the Stability pact and European Commission –YOUTHNET to give additional visibility of the implementation of the project and its main issues.

·          e) how you intend to achieve a multiplier effect of both the activity in question and the YOUTH programme;

The continuation and multiplication of the activity will be ensured by the work meeting at the end of the project, the aim of which is not only to evaluate the success of the current large-scale project, but also to prepare future common projects between the participating organizations and countries, which will deal with the same problems and which will try, by laying on the bases of “Your Way To Tolerance”, to further increase the achieved results. These future common projects will also be applied before the “Youth” program of the European Commission.

Throughout the whole project, in all the activities which will be held, we will expressively state, that they are organized with the support of the “Youth” program and the respective National Agencies. This will be presented to all the mass-media, which are covering the events and will be mentioned in all printed materials – brochures, leaflets, analysis, multimedia presentations etc.

All the best practices achieved during the implementation of the project will be spread to different public institutions, NGOs and youth network in the Region and European Union, as good models for future using.

·          f) to what extent your project is based on intercultural working methods and non-formal education in a European context.

“Your Way to Tolerance” is based upon joint actions between youngsters from different countries. The seminars, open-air happenings, campaigns in each country will be attended by participants from the other countries too. The results of the competitions will be presented in the other languages. All the results of the activities and the analysis that have been made will be translated in the languages of all the participants.

But the main way through which we will achieve intercultural learning will be the “Passport for Tolerance”. Its aim will be the stimulation of youth traveling in other countries in order to discover the interesting sites, connected with the history, culture, traditions as well as interesting international youth events. This passport will ensure the deep intercultural exchange.

The project also intends to popularize among the participants the non-formal education. Their working together on the different activities – the seminars, discussions, and outdoors happenings will help them to better understand the needs of the other ethnical groups, their ways of living, their problems, which is much better and useful, than to learn it from a textbook.