Wednesday, march 24

After some tinkering for an hour or two i got the files working! started to put up some  of the links and i'll finish them as i get the files and get a chance to upload them. the goal is that on saturday everything will be picture perfect!

Actually this is not all true. The events after dinner was so full of energy that i couldn't focus on tampering with the blog just yet, so i cultivated some more music. I also found some  tutorials on youtube how to count in different languages, which took a bit too much of my time. Saying "2000" in greek is a tongue tie!

This morning i wasn't the most energetic in the hall but my spirit was high. The day starts off with Greece introducing their Good examples of success helping youth getting employment.

The first item was Culturepolis, which to me seemed to be about merging rural identities and "modern" or metropolitan identities without destroying the identities, ie getting youngsters that has grown up in metropolitan areas to get a better understanding for the rural traditions and culture. In some countries this might be a small thing, but Greece seem to be in a situation where there actually is a vast differance between these two areas.

Further they presented work with the European Music Day. This was the first time i had heard of this day, and with my music interest i liked the idea. they talked about the specific case of a man named George Bellos who attended this music day and a bar owner actually signed a contract after his performances to work in the bar for the rest of the season.

On to Scotland and Bridges project. It is a non-profit group that helps young people with social displacements (trouble at school, friends, family or their neighbourhoods). In short helping youngsters that have a tough time at school, maybe dropping out all together, bad situations with their families like drugs or alcohol, friends int he wrong elements which might inspire to take up criminality, or a tough neighbourhood.

What inspired me was the amount of time it seemed to take with the youngsters. Four years is a long time with Communicare standards, but we have to remember that the youth attending communicare more often than not already have some ideas and above all a motivation to get someting going. Bridges project apparently doesn't have this luxury and how they're not feeling a sense of hopelessness is beyond me. Tremendous efforts.

Turkey is up next and starts off speaking about Yildiz Technical university of istanbul. Their scheme is about having a good relationship with 85 other countries and their technical universities and they perform an exchange of students to teach youths about the labour markets in different countries and the goal is for the exchange to lead to internship.

With a little shift in personell we get another presentation, this time about Yildiz buissness & education Coaching. We were shown efforts to help students to countries all over the world, getting an opportunity to study in a foreign country and then finishing off their studies back in Istanbul, with the goals to head back out and maybe get a job. the example was of a student going to Germany for a period of his studies, returning to Istanbul just to finish his graduation and then aiming to go back to Germany and getting a more permanent installation there.

Now it was time for Italy to give us some good examples. It is really hard not to smile with the representative's energetic mannerism and style! We get to hear about the Solidarity Center of the Third Sector. We were informed that to make some industrial progression in a specific area, teh goverment decided to build a factory. A problem arose detailing polution as the main problem, and the factory was forced to close. This, however, lead to unemployment rising and now the goverment seems to investigate starting a new factory but with a sustainable level of polution, ie a better attitude towards environmental issues.

Since Solidarity Center of the Third Sector started in 2004 they managed to expand from helping citizens to be more active in their citizenships and social responsabilities, to including youth unemployment in 2008.

We see that Italy's organisation is a young one, but that gives them an even bigger opportunity to take something home with them during this week, and i hope they get every chance at finding good examples of methods to use.

Time for a little more love from Comunicare this time we get a persentation on the project called Attityd (Attitude) which is actually the first project that Communicare started. It's goal is to change the attitudes of youngsters to dare to start their own companies. Sweden has the luxury of a good social security network and works as a saftey net when starting a company. Attityd's technique is to have 1-on-1 meetings with the participant and  work ideas into buisness plans, and further into real buinesses.

After this we had the local newspaper Nya wermlandstidningen (NWT) on a visit, and we held a short presentation of each participant and what we represented. After a brief interruption labeled "today's entertainment" by Mathias Mellgren could be diplomatically described as a local sitting in on the event and suddenly venting his oppinion. We're reminded that the hall we are in usually is used for the municipality meetings that sometimes are held with doors open to the public.

From the short presentations from each of the participants i suddenly noticed a change in how people described why they were there. Almost everyone said they'd  seen new posibilities of partnerships and ways or methods to further help their own groups and projects. As little as two and a half day gave results.

In between me taking breaks in this unusually long post, i'm getting swamped in friend invites from facebook. It has motivated me to try and finish this entry as soon as possible tonight, so i can start fresh tomorrow!

next is Bulgaria. I noticed how they tried to tie their projects with themes, either environmental themes or for example the Traffic saftey project originating from a seminar in UK. I got the notion that they did a good work bringing themes of seminars back to Bulgaria and converting it into a project for the youth.  I think this helps to bring focus for both the youths and the people that arrange the project and gives the youth a common topic to develop their social skills around.

Later i find out that these good examples presentations has lead to at least some discussions about partnerships. Every long journey starts with a tiny single step.

Next on the menu: Swedish National board of Youth Affairs. The link is for their website but with their english content. Not all their content is tranlated but much of their downloadable content are translated.

Pontus Ekstam gives us a very thorough and well done presentation. It was a long one, but i never really felt like it was too long. the presentation was calle d"Working on work" and is added here in our file section.

I'm gonna let you read that presentation because it is very well made and describes the Swedish stand in the European union's goals with youth unemployment.  I got the impression of a strong stand and a will to drive the goals home. We got the press release info about Berosso's Lisabon stratergy for 2010 and that it had been re-evaluated and conveted into a new stratergy for 2020. The presentations also contain useful links where needed.

I liked the move to present three tips to get projects granted:

1) Read and understand the programme guide.

2) Don't do it yourself, involve others.

3) Focus on the objectives and priorities of the project.

Pontus wouldn't go as far as to stake his honour on the press release that told us that in the year 2010-2011 the first goal of sweden might be Youth unemployment, but he was really hoping for this to be the case as it would make some seriously interresting times.

The final presentation of good examples today was Poland. The info that caght me on the hook was the focus on developing major social skills with youths from europe (in this case swedish youths) in social projects where management, economics of the projects. As with Bulgaria  we were shown how the projects for youths were themed and here they'd chose to involve the society around the project. One example was a theme about dogs. The neighbours where invited to visit the project and bring their dogs to make an even where not only the youths learned something.

I think it's important that the society around us are getting information about the youth unemployment because i think this problem can be tackled both by encouraging  youths to take a chance but also informing employers and maybe the employers will give our youth a shot.

Just by name alone i liked the project "One Beer... One life". Explanation excluded.

After that we prepared the topics for open space on thursday.

This dinner's entertainment had fallen in my group's sadistic hands! since our previous entertainments had been about internationality and bridging cultural obstacles Photini came up with the wonderful idea fo holding an Anti-eurovision song contest. Four songs of non-english nativly speaking countries presented a traditional song and was sung by a group of people with no skills in the language!

I had the honour of teaching a swedish children song to the greeks, with a sonic backup from Liverpool. The event quickly turned into a Battle of the Choirs, and no matter what points where given by the juries around europe, i'm proud of mine!

Oh, and i have a requested entry: "Jim, i want to make a note that even tho Fiona had a cold she impress us all with her diligence and fervor in participating in the seminar".

Some how i think that last part won't have the effect originally intended...

here endeth the day, at 0100 hours. Captain Kirk, signing off.