„Find your talent, work on your skills!“, a new strategic partnership in the field of youth, a new and exciting Erasmus + Ka2 project gathered together last weekend, 21-22 September 2019, four NGOs in the friendly city of Almelo, Netherlands.
The coordinator of the project is Stichting Avedan Welzjin from the Netherlands, that’s why Kim Novak and Patricia Kuster were our hosts for the transnational meeting at the offices of Avedan . Avedan Welzjin is a welfare organization that works with a wide range of social policy in the area. It works closely together with the local municipalities, focusing on groups and individual citizens and promoting social participation.
Two representatives of each partner organization took part at the meeting:
Jens Depelchin and Laura Vantornout have represented iDrops from Belgium, a social innovation agency that tackles important social issues in their activity. Imago Mundi Projects and Initiatives for Youths Association has been represented by Constantin Dedu and Aura Constantinescu, youth workers. The Romanian NGO supports the personal development of the youths and contributes to the development of the local communities by local activities and international projects carried out for more than 10 years.
Fundacja Youth ACT from Poland was represented by Filip Krajniak, the director, and Mateusz Górecki; their organization promotes at local level the Non-Formal Education in the local schools and implements workshops for youths development, using the improvisation theater and British drama as a methodology.
Find your talent, work on your skills! is a 24 months project and it focuses on talent development in working with young people. Each partner organization has different expertise, methods and outlook on talent development. Using interconnected expertise, we shall be able to develop methods and tools for youth workers to identify individual talent in a group, to stimulate self discovery, self knowledge and self regulation, to develop a program with projects and activities for all talent areas and skills needed nowadays.
There will be 4 training courses, one per country, 80 youth workers will attend them and then disseminate and spread the knowledge in a web of local activities. Two intellectual outputs, a Guide on Talent Development and an Innovative phone app for visualizing youth’s talent will be developed with all the partners contribution. A web of local activities will involve numerous youths from the local communities involved. During the meeting, the participants have gone briefly through all the project and have established clear responsibilities for each NGO for the following months.
Regarding the dates for all the TCs, during this meeting, partners decided that the first TC (training course) will unfold in December 2019, the second, in Romania in April 2020, the third in The Netherlands in October 2020 and the last TC will take place in Poland in December 2020.
The second Transnational Meeting will take place in Belgium in June 2020, and the third in Romania, followed immediately by the multiplier event in May 2021.
There have been asked a lot of questions, and a lot of answers have been told. Everybody went away from the meeting with a clear mind, knowing what to do further. After the meeting, a very moving moment has happened while visiting Studio15 Avedan: the Romanians met the youths and the youth workers from the project Eyes On Transylvania, an Erasmus+ youth exchange that took place in Sighisoara, Romania, this summer. In this bilateral youth exchange, funded under the Erasmus+ program, Imago Mundi Association was also partner with Avedan Welzjin. Nice memories, hugs, joy and songs, friendship and a lot of love have floated in the air that evening!
Till we meet again…
