The main objective of the contact seminars is to enable representatives of organizations working with young people to get in touch with each other, to discuss experiences, to create new contacts, to initiate new activities and ideas. All this will help them to show their competitiveness, but also to offer more services for the young people that they working with.A couple of important topics for the sector were addressed:• What is a solidarity project?
• Why NGOs work with volunteers?
• Roles and responses of the youth worker.
• Partnership – specifics and ethics.
The program is beautifully balanced and has the opportunity for all participants to share their experience and expertise. In small working groups, was discussed the strategies for resolving the specific issues such as: to increase the quality of the projects, working with disadvantaged people, visibility and dissemination of the results. Many of the organizations were from the Balkan countries. The participants shared a common problem across all Balkan countries: young people prefer to be volunteers in West-Europe
and it is very difficult to find volunteers willing to go to a neighboring country. “This is a challenge to all of us as youth workers – told us Pepa Peneva, our representative in the seminar. We have accepted that we have many similarities in the Balkans and we not find it interesting to understand and get to know the neighboring countries. Maybe it is time to organize more youth exchanges between neighboring countries to rediscover our neighbors and to show young people that it is worth the time and enjoy the causes at close quarters.”
With plans and ideas for new projects, started from Roca Moffino, a lovely Italian village, some of the participants found an energy to climb up to the crater of Vesuvius and enjoyed the view of Naples.The project is funded by the EU program “Erasmus+” and National Agencies in the Netherlands.Compliments to the facilitators of the seminar and the wonderful atmosphere it creates.
