GIVE MORE POWER TO YOUR ENGINE!

Period: 15-24 August 2013

Place: Sovata, International Youth Center of Outward Bound Romania and Gurghiului Mountains, Mureș river

Participants: disadvantaged and/or unemployed youth people

Partners:

-Vecpiebalgas novada pašvaldība (Latvia)

-Città di Torino – Servizio Centrale Attività Internazionali e Gioventù – Ufficio Scambi Internazionali (Italy)

-Mentál-mankó Alapítvány (Hungary)

-Active Ideas Foundation (Bulgaria)

-InfoEck – Jugendinfo Tirol (Austria)

Financial support: The Youth in Action Program of the European Commission

The main goal of the project: was to develop the self-esteem of the participants and help them to find a job easily after the program

The main achievements:

-Personal development

-Developing motivation

-Project management skills

-Development of entrepreneurship

-Develop self-confidence

-Developing initiatives

-Development of creativity

-Emphasize the importance of a healthy active lifestyle

-Setting and achieving personal goals

-Expanding the theoretical and practical knowledge related to employment

-Awareness of the importance of volunteering

Description:

The youth exchange entitled ” Give more power to your engine!”  brought together 27 unemployed young people aged between 16-25 years, and 6 group leader from 6  different European countries (Romania, Italy, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria)  to Sovata and Gurghiului Mountains, Romania. Our main goal was to help the participants to improve their self confidence, their active job seeking and also entrepreneurship skills. During the 9 days program participants experienced self- confidence building activities, worked on self-management. Besides the experienced technical skills, the exchange developed initiative taking, creativity, strategically thinking, self-esteem, responsibility, goal setting and achieving the set goals, and also the active participation. Another goal of the exchange was to contribute to the fight against unemployment, marginalization of underprivileged youth, to make possible young people to be active in the society, to foster their social inclusion and to empower them to have self-confidence for job seeking and/or entrepreneurship. The exchange created participants also the possibility to learn about each other’s country, about each other’s culture.

The methods we used are outdoor sports and experiential education. By having most of the activities interactive and in the outdoors, participants learnt also about healthy lifestyle, healthy behaviors.

Main activities were:
– knowing each other activities
– teambuilding activities
– canoe expedition
– overnight expedition
– orienteering
– ropes course activities, trust building
– volunteering
– indoor simulation workshops about engagement
– cultural nights

You can find photos about the program here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/110927979152780545744/albums/5916114094642992641?banner=pwa
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.665218903490173.1073741888.181330515212350&type=3