“UPGRADE” inRustavi
The first Youth exchange within the project UPGRADE took place in Rustavi, Georgia from 1 until 10th of October, 2019. Rustavi hosted 37 youth from Sweden, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine and Georgia. The main aim of the activity was to raise awareness of youth about non-formal education, its methods and to empower them, later to organize the non-formal educational activities for their peers.
Objectives of the youth exchange were:
- To provide space for facilitating non-formal learning activities for young people in an international environment
- To support the development of a participatory approach of youth workers through acting as group leaders and developing sessions together with young people/dividing responsibilities among them;
- To increase the level of competence and confidence of youth workers to cooperate transnationally and to involve young people from the youth centers
Preparation for the project started one month earlier, when youth leaders met each other online and created the structure of participants selection process and at the same time involving them in the planning process of the youth exchange programme. After the selection of youth, youth leaders identified main topics youth wanted to discuss and present during the project to their peers.
As a result during the youth exchange youth with the support of leaders, organized thirteen workshops on following topics: Art and communication, art as the way of expression yourself, gender and gender stereotypes, mental health, communication and collaboration, bullying and integration. The structure of workshops, topics and methods were chosen by the youth. All this at first made them familiar with how to plan the educational activities, how to identify the main aim of it and how to implement it by using various methods in order to test their skills in practice.
Together with the educational part exchange included cultural exchange in the international environment. In this regard, every night cultural evening was scheduled, where each country had the possibility to present their culture the way they wanted including presentations, music, dances, special food etc. Even more, in order to get familiar with the local cultures participants visited local touristic places Ananuri monastery, Jvari Monastery, Mtskheta and Tbilisi.
In total based on the positive feedback from Youth, youth exchange was a success for both, as for the youth as for the youth leaders.
