Healthy for life 2
Healthy for Life Second Edition is a youth exchange with partners from 6 EU countries: Romania, Croatia, Poland, Bulgaria, Portugal and Spain. It lasts 6 months, from 1 February 2016 until 31 July 2016, with a period of 14 days of activities, as well as one day for traveling before and one after, between 04 and 19 June 2016. The location of the activities is the village of Poiana Negrii, close to the mountain resort of Vatra Dornei, Romania. At the activities will be present a group of 38 youngsters with ages between 18 and 30 and 7 group leaders without age limit. The Romanian group will consist of 8 youngsters and 2 leaders, the foreign groups will consist of 6 youngsters and 1 leader.
Statistics show that, at European level, 36% of the age group 15-24 and 54% of the age group 25-39 are rarely or not at all getting involved in sports or other physical recreational activities. At country level, for the partners involved in our project and on the relevant age group for our target, 18-30, in Romania and Bulgaria the percentage of inactive youth is 50%. In Poland is 42% and in Croatia, Spain and Portugal the scores are a little better, with values between 31-33%. Sedentarism is a problem that high percentages of youth in the partner countries are confronting with, and it can lead to obesity, cardiovascular accidents, depression and other physical or psychological afflictions. Together with our partners, we wish to help youth from our communities to acknowledge that practicing sports and recreational outdoor activities (running, hiking, adventure sports) is beneficial for their physical and mental health.
Healthy for Life – Second Edition has the aim of increasing the level of acknowledgement of the importance of including sports and other outdoor recreational activities in the life of young people from the communities of the partners involved, underlining their positive impact for a healthy lifestyle. In this sense, a variety of non-formal education methods and practical activities will be used to help youngsters learn by experimenting, in a multicultural context.
The objectives of the project:
a) The facilitation of the exchange of experiences, information and ideas between the 38 young people participating to the activities, under the guidance of the 7 leaders, related to the theme of the project (practicing regularly sports and outdoor recreational activities)
b) Involving the group (45 persons) in concrete sports and outdoor recreational activities, from which they can discover the benefits directly (individual and team sports, hiking, ziplining, river rafting)
c) Dissemination of relevant information related to the theme of the project in the communities involved through the use of the following instruments created by the participants: 5 motivational videos; 1 brochure in electronic format; 1 dedicated Facebook page; 1 dedicated YouTube channel
d) Updating the existing platform hflproject.wordpress.com and promoting the second edition of the project
e) The creation of a communication platform online (Facebook group) for developing connections between participants, group leaders and partner organizations
The working methods at the root of this project are coming from the field of non-formal education and can be split into the following categories: integrative, which stimulate the participants getting to know each other, the group cohesion and dynamics; creative, which stimulate the ingenuity and artistic sense of the youngsters, offering them freedom of expression (artistic presentations, creational workshops); of intercultural learning, which help the participants to surpass their cultural barriers, their stereotypes and prejudices about other cultures; of learning by doing; of reflection and self-reflection.