Animate your community - Cyprus

Background of the project Reaching groups of young people that are excluded, isolated, discriminated, building a tolerant and healthy divers community is always a hard, challenging and difficult task. Streets have a huge potential in terms of informing, making awareness, including and building a community therefore specific methods designed for street work are highly recommended in this field and specially in times when they are not so widely applied. The main goal of the project is to develop competencies among youth workers to contribute to a cohesive society though alternative street animation and campaigning methods. More specific objectives are: • To increase the knowledge level of young people and youth workers in topics like: active participation, discrimination, social and global justice, social exclusion; • To create pro-active attitudes towards social exclusion and global issues; • To encourage participation and involvement of young people in social processes; • To develop sense of common responsibility for the future of their local communities from a global and social perspective; • To develop practical skills in street animation and campaigning methods (street theater, clowning, joggling, flash mobs, animation, etc.); • To stimulate the participants to act as street campaigning multipliers in their own organization and regions. Training course During the training course, participants will go to an in-depth process of exploring global and social topics and how to apply “think global, act local” motto in their own lives and organizations by acquiring new alternative methods for making awareness/information/inclusion. Different “street work” tools and methods will be explored and can be used further on in their activities with their target groups and in non-formal education of their colleagues. Target group The target audience are youth workers (aged 18 and above) that are active in community development field and need to develop multiplying skills in alternative methods as street animation and campaigning in order to reach more target groups in their communities. Previous experience in local projects aiming at community development or/and social intervention is desired. There will be 26 participants in total and youth workers from following countries are invited to apply: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Estonia, Montenegro, United Kingdom, Italy, Romania, FYR of Macedonia, Serbia and Bulgaria. If you are interested in taking part in “ANIMATE YOUR SOUL” training course, please fill in the application form and return it completed no later than October 6th, 2013 to ayscyprus2013@gmail.com