2015 What is Komorebi ? It is Japanese non translatable word that we have chosen for the project as it nicely describes what we would like to do and experience during the project. Komorebi (Japanese): the sort of dappled, scattered light effect that happens when sunlight shines through trees. Youth Workers from 5 organisations from Germany, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and United Kingdom decided to prepare a Learning Mobility project with 3 trainings/meetings in Germany, Spain and Italy. All the organisations are active in youth work, connected with areas of healthy lifestyles, education, youth unemployment and social work. The partners expressed their mutual interest in creating a network based on strong partnerships aimed to connect more and exchange the good practices in relevant areas of their work.
The project will lasted for 15 months, start in May 2015. It involved 3 meetings/trainings of youth workers in Germany, Spain and Italy. The meetings will be based on different combinations of outdoor activities (organic gardening, yoga, workshops) and Komorebi workshops and field trips in forrest, educational trainings (seminars, workshops on transversal skills and innovative methods of youth work), learning opportunities of European instruments/certificates (Youthpass, Europass CV) and practical management education (fundraising for organisations on national and international level, grant writing, Erasmus+ opportunities presentations). During the partner meetings, photos and videos of activities will be taken and put into media forms which summarise the events and practical results attained. We will take photos and videos of educational activities, practical outdoor activities (ie. planting the garden) and feedback from the youth from local communities who will attain the meetings.
The conclusions of the meetings will be: – in Germany – preparatory event (communication skills development, outreach for youth), – in Spain – practical development event (European instruments, outdoor activities), – in Italy – conclusion of the gained experience (fundraising, entrepreneurship ideas for youth). The objectives of the project are: a) We would like to learn and share about activities in forest, organic gardens, out door activities that would help youth ultimately get more in touch in nature and be at least some time offline in the forest or nature. Nowadays almost non stop we are on-line connected to virtual reality and we lose touch with ourselfs, friends, family and also with nature. So the project is designed for youth workers to learn how to engage youth in local activities and also later on in new partnership activities (like EVS, youth exchanges, strategic partnerships, transnational youth initiatives,…) that will help the gain new skills and get in better shape, respect nature, be more in tune with natural biorhythm and live healthily. b) Creating a platform for a European network of organisations active in the areas of ecology, youth work, youth volunteering, healthy lifestyles, tackling youth unemployment and gaining new skills for youth social entrepreneurship; c) The project is aiming to directly tackle the problem of youth unemployment in modern society suggesting the alternative ways of youth engagement by changing the urban-rural paradigm and empowering youth by nature itself. The statistics on youth unemployment in EU are frightening. The leading country in this area is Spain (54,3%); Over 5 million young people (under 25) were unemployed in the EU-28 area in the second quarter of 2014. This represents an unemployment rate of 21.7% (23.2% in the euro area).
This is more than twice as high as the adult unemployment rate (9.0%). Youth social entrepreneurship is one of the sub-themes of this project. It is an increasingly common approach to engaging youth in solving social problems. Our project promotes these efforts through a variety of incentives, engaging youth in producing environmentally-friendly products and services. After the meetings of youth workers, each organisation will hold dissemination public event in their local communities (already drafted in preparatory stage of the project), where the results of the project will be shown (photo and video diary of the project, presentations by participants on subjects learned at meetings, presentations of physical and character improvement of participants, promotion of Erasmus+ program opportunities etc.).
On this events local stakeholders (youth NGOs and other educational and youth-working organisations, local municipality) and media will be invited for purpose of further dissemination of the project The long term effect of the project would be seen through the newly formed network of organisations where the youth workers will have more opportunities for professionalisation, skills and experience development and to improve the implementation of their learned experiences in local communities and outreach their target groups more effectively.
