YE Color Blind

Objectives

The project tends to foster mutual understanding between young people through their interaction, intercultural and interracial tolerance and acceptance. To build European values, young people wants to address their mutual importance in creating the positive changes in the life of their communities. The space for multicultural learning and understanding and promoting the topic of project through Erasmus+ Program can show direct results. Final result will be production of tool in a form of board game which will promote European values and will be further implemented in schools and youth organisations.

Activities

Main and only mobility activity is Youth Exchange “Color Blind” which will bring together 30 young people from 18-25 years old from six programme countries (Croatia, Romania, Germany, Portugal, Serbia, Hungary and UK) with one leader from each partner country with no age limit. From organizer country coordinator of the project will be also present on activity. The project activities will take place in Kalnik and Ludbreg, Croatia and will last for 8 days (including travel days). Half of the participants will be young people with fewer opportunities.
The methodology of this project will be focused on non-formal education principles, which include discussions, team building activities, debates, team work, workshops, reflection groups, energizers and ice-breakers, games, intercultural dialogues and country presentations, trips and treasure-hunts.

Impact

The main theme of this youth exchange is promotion of intercultural and ethnic diversity awareness among youth. It will impact young people so they will learn about the most crucial experience of being bullied by the factor of cultural or ethnical difference of the individuals in local societies, discuss the subject of intercultural diversity, explore challenging behaviors based on cultural differences in European countries. The participants will discover how they may influence on certain matters and fight the ethnic and cultural discrimination in their local communities by remaining in peace with each and every individual of the group. They will also learn about non-formal learning, values of European Union and how to transfer knowledge to others.
During the project young participants will learn how to make the tool for social inclusion and they will use that tool in future work.

Partners
ACTIVE WOMEN ASSOCIATION
Odred izvidjaca “10. Oktobar”
JUBUK
STUDIO PROGETTO SOC. COOP. SOC.
AYUNTAMIENTO DE GIJON
LUMEN
Group structure: 6 participants and 1 leader
Age: 18-26 years old participants, no age limit for lead

FLOW OF THE ACTIVITY
– As seen by participants

Welcome to the first article about a whole day (and night), written by Elena and Ruthi

“I am scary” has been one of the quotes of the day. But since our dear trainer Nina has a heart of chocolate, you should look between the lines! A first day in a YE can be frightening and exhausting, especially for shy introverts. Like a push into cold water; with all the new rules, arrangements and side-effects of sharing a week with a bunch of strangers.
But this day really melted away like good ol’chocolate. We were entering the water of enlightenment with a welcoming warm shower (rain). We were working our way from shallow towards deeper seas, discovering facts on the surface, like “where do you live and what’s your names?” but already digging deeper with great curiosity. (We’ve even had heroes of the day, which is awesome, given the fact that we were not warned to act like one).
Let’s keep up the good pace and let the second day flow!

Each country group is sharing culture, knowledge, traditions, values, etc.

We start a training camp called « Color Blind » about youth exchange, in Croatia. We are 6 groups, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Serbia and Poland.

The second day we had an exercice, about creating our country. Like choosing a name, territory, flags, etc. This session was really interesting because by group we discussed and invented crazy ideas.

~Aurelie~Guido~Uri~Natalia~Marius~Nikodem

Day4 – A visit to Varazdin
The sun was shining in the sky, it was an amazing day but Nina decided to ruin all giving us a schedule with some things to do.
I thought it was a trip, but in reality (IN REALITY) was a bait to challenge us.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, NINA.
So here we go, open maps and look for 5 monuments, we have to take a photo of them, nothing special until I decided to read the rest of the list.
“Do an Human Pyramid in front of a monument and take a photo”
Yes Nina, of course (Infact we did it).
I thought was the harder one, but no.
“Sing in a square and collect 10 kunes”
My mind: How can this work?
We were in the center square like, 20 something and so we decided to sing Wonderwall all togheter, what a quality investment. 70 kunes for that performance, also in Etihad Stadium they don’t make a performance like that.
Anyway, the afternoon was so fun.
Rain, rain and.. Rain (I thought I was forgetting it).
In conclusion, I reflected in train and I’m supposed to say Ty to Nina and Igor for this trip.
Love react if you appreciate, like if you are still reading and wow react if you think Nina has got a lot of charisma.

The youth exchange “Color Blind” took place in Ludbreg, a quaint little town in the North of Croatia, during the beginning of July.
30 young people from Croatia, Germany, Italy, Poland, Serbia and Spain were living
and working together for the duration of one week. The main topic of the
youth exchange was to promote intercultural and ethnic diversity among young people. The week started with different integration games in order to form a group out of six national groups. After accomplishing that, there were different activities in order to get an overview about the topic. For instance every national group had to hold a workshop about a particular topic in the field of diversity awareness. The German team prepared a workshop about “communication when in danger”. With a roleplay the whole group got involved and could develop understanding for the difficulties of communication in such situations.

The week was accompanied by two highlights. The first one was the development and preparation of board games. Our group chose a memory-like game that we handcrafted by ourselves. The very next day after the preparation we
visited a school for pupils with different disabilities. Despite the language barrier we could manage to present our games and the kids had a lot of fun playing them with us. Another highlight of the week was the day trip to Varaždin. The city is located just a 20-minute train ride from Ludbreg.
Here we started with a city game and had the rest of the day to discover the city by ourselves. Despite a heavy rain, we enjoyed our time and could take lots of pictures in this beautiful town. The nights were mostly
accompanied by intercultural nights and a big farewell and barbecue at the last night. With the Youth Pass ceremony that very exciting and challenging week had come to an end.

Ruth:

„Lumen“ is the name of the youth organisation in catholic city Ludbreg. I think this is really on point, because it gives a light for those who don’t wear a halo every day.

In this youth exchange I discovered how beautifully and peaceful a bunch of strangers can learn from each others. Not „learning“ like in university or school! Throughout the program we had difficult tasks, even a „mission impossible“; and we learned to just get it done together. With passion and joy! No matter how different we all were; with backgrounds in all shades of the rainbow, abilities and talents widespread: we were a great team! So can you tell the difference between emigration and immigration? Can you sing your own YE-anthem until you’re ears fall off? We can! As if this wasn’t enough to brag about, there was a tangible result at the end of our work: each national group created at least one boardgame, inspired by our personal favourites in this field. So we got out of our collective comfort zone, visited the „house of the sun“, a non profit, citizen-run place for everyone to have a good day in a lovely company, embracing any disabilities and handicaps. Our marketing-trial was set out on a target group of mostly children with few or non existing English skills. What? Do I speak universe? But as the magic happens; we had a great time playing, making new friends, letting go of fears and prejudice.
Of course, all this happy hippie tale of a youth exchange MUST have an edgy crunch. Therefore, we had our spunishments, the wonderful fellows grown up in Spain, who were willing to perform all our nasty ideas of punishments (for being late). So I have this dark colors covered, too. My rainbow of report for you is complete 🙂