The Cadre of Change

The goal of this training seminar taking place on 24th of October till 1st of November in Moldova is to help youth workers develop new tools and competences in the field of social campaigns and promotion of their work. The project is a result of partnership building activity ‘Go East!’ organized by SALTO Eastern Europe and Caucasus Resource Centre and French, Norwegian and Polish National Agencies in March 2014 in Georgia. During the activity representatives of partner organization agreed that the issue of ineffective promotion and lack of engagement from the side of young people is common in different countries, thus they agreed to organize a project that will help to improve that situation. During the 8 days of training 24 participants – youth workers working on different social issues in 8 countries – will take care in workshops, open discussions, team-building activities concerning the topic of social campaigns. They will learn how to use photo and videography, social media, street actions, flash mobs etc. to promote their work, raise awareness on social issues and attract more young people work with them. The participants will divide themselves into small groups depending in their field of interest and then they will work on a project of social campaign relevant to their country or local community. Results of their work will be shown on a final exhibition and big street event in Chisinau. As a result of the project youth works will develop new technical skills in social marketing. They will deepen the sense of entrepreneurship and responsibility of their work among their target groups. They will learn how to visualize the issues they are working on and how to engage their local community into their actions. Due to improvement and professionalization of their work they will be more attractive and more influential in their community, thus they will bring more attention to concerning social issues and engage more people in their work. The results of the project will be shared on social media platforms and websites. Beside them, a handbook will be released that will include all the outcomes of the project, good practices and learning methods. The entire outcome will serve as a basis for future cooperation among participants who will find potential future partners working in the same field of interest. The main objectives of the project are: To teach youth workers tools useful in promotion of their work such as: social media, photography, videos, flash mobs, exhibitions, fairs etc. To create or develop new communication channels and platforms (such as: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter) To raise awareness on the social issues relevant to the work of participants among them and their target groups; To stimulate the sense of entrepreneurship and responsibility for their work among participants (a lot of young people feel resigned and put off not being able to reach out to their target group or raise voice on the important topic. Our project will help them use new tools to promote their work and focus most of their strength on issues they are working with); Create a link between professional business and social work by showing that skills relevant to work and career can be used and developed also in youth work, making the said person more attractive on a labor market. We chose Moldova as the venue of the project due to several reasons. Moldova has a history of social activism held with the help of social media, especially in 2009, when on the 7th of April “the Twitter Revolution” took place conducted against the Fraud Elections. The participants of the project will thus have an opportunity to discuss and see the realistic outcome of social campaigns in the venue of the project and talk about the importance of such campaigns with people who were affected by them.