In the framework of youth exchange young people are getting knowledge and skills to organize awareness raising campaigns on youth work.
In the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, active representatives of different European youth organizations have been gathered in order to exchange their experience in the field of Youth Work. This gives an opportunity to understand how should youth campaigns been organized for making Youth Work more valued and underlined.
This youth exchange is the part of “International Youth Studies (InYouS)” long term and capacity building project started this April by the Federation of Youth Clubs of Armenia. In the 4th activity there are participants not only from Armenia, but also from Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Portugal, Czech Republic, Belgium, etc.
Young people participating in the Youth Exchange, which started on 26 October, got the chance to make a field visit to Kharkiv Youth City Council and meet with their active representatives. This was very useful for being aware on the recent developments and success of Youth Work field in Ukraine.
“It is very important these kind of youth exchange meetings for ensuring the success of long term projects. The participants now are more than equipped with updated knowledge and skills, which they can use in their local communities, youth clubs for including young people”, told Diana Yeghiazaryan, the coordinator of “International Youth Studies” and International Secretary of FYCA.
Liubov Koldina, the representative of Liberty Forum, the partner and host organization of this project, said: “Of course it was a challenge that many people were not aware about Ukraine and especially Kharkiv city. However, as we are on the 4th stage of InYouS project, we already had some links and connections between participants from the previous activities. Some of them were already involved to the topic and we have a nice balance of challenges and success. I am very happy to host such bright young people in my home country”.
Young people interested in the promotion of Youth Work implemented a massive action of flashmob in the centre of Kharkiv thus attracting the attention of passing by people to Youth Work. “Youth Work! What is it? Check #InYouS”: this was the message to pass to local people. Participants also made QR codes with the information of project in order to pass that to people easily in this digital world.
In the future young people are going to develop mechanisms how to implement awareness raising campaigns in order to promote Youth Work and make it more visible and engaging. They are going to develop also examples of campaigns, which will help afterwards to make “International Youth Studies” distance learning course promotion efficient.
Adding to that “International Youth Studies” project is being implemented by the biggest youth organization Federation of Youth Clubs of Armenia with the financial support by the European Union. The project consisted by 5 activities was launched this year in April in Yerevan, after which 2 activities were implemented: a training course in Tbilisi and a youth exchange in Prague. The partner organizations of this project are 15 including Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Turkey, Belgium, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, Sweden, Armenia.