Representative and volunteers from NGO Mladiinfo Montenegro, participated in a seminar on media, media tools and writing projects on youth exchanges, held in the town of Paralia in Greece.
A seminar titled LESS OPPORTUNITIES + MEDIA TOOLS = BETTER OPPORTUNITIES lasted from may 25 until jun 2 2018 year. The training is part of the Erasmus + Action KA2 program, which was designed and funded by the European Commission, and was implemented by the main project coordinator Gjoko Grdanovski of Youth Council Next Generation. Participation was taken by 35 young people from six countries: Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, Greece and Poland. The delegation of Montenegro was represented by: Hajdana Tadić, Aleksandra Vojinović, Boško Femić, Damir Šukurica, Marta Martinović and Iva Mijović.
The aim of the project is to raise the capacities of organizations in the use of media tools because they have shown great interest in developing the competences of young people through the application of these tools to help the personal and professional development of young people with fewer opportunities in life, so they are the main target group of partner organizations.
At the beginning, the participants met through Designed Names and Getting to know each other’s games, then expressed their expectations, contributions and fears that correlated with the activities. After that, an interactive workshop was organized in the form of brain-storming and group work, where the participants had the opportunity to exchange views on the impact of the media on young people with more or lesser life opportunities, and concluded that people who do not have enough skills and knowledge can not be carelessly used in media tools, especially if they are working on the development of young people with less available opportunities.
The participants recognized the importance of the media for organizations that use it both internally and for external communication, giving support to youth initiatives, while looking for new volunteers and connecting stakeholders and creating partnerships.
The workshops were conceived as a form of informal education and were followed by various games and energizers, allowing participants to maintain concentration and at the same time to relax and work in a pleasant atmosphere.
Also, each participating country had the opportunity to display the culture of its country, traditional food, games and music through the intercultural evening.
The intention of such exchanges is a form of informal education, as well as the socializing of young people through joint stay, swimming and relaxation on the beach, at the swimming pool at Hotel Giannoulis, visiting Thessaloniki, joint dawning on the Paralian riviera, parties in the Gold Club.
Participants passed the theoretical part, so they became acquainted with the Erasmus + program and student mobility opportunities (some of the participants in youth exchanges were willing to share their experience of studies and co-existence with people from different countries); forms of exchange such as: trainings, youth exchange, job shadowing, seminars, FBA / contact making seminar; how long the exchange can be, EVS, who can be participants, and all this served them when they were writing projects.
It was important to understand how to apply for the project so that it is approved, what conditions to satisfy, explain to the details how the project will be implemented and what is its ultimate purpose with the final evaluation and output.
In the end, a presentation of group projects was organized, followed by the interaction and discussion of participants and facilitators in order to determine what are projects’ shortcomings and what should be improved in order for them to be accepted. All the projects were done in written form so that the main coordinator of the seminar Gjoko Grdanovski and his associate Zorica Todorovska and the facilitator Eva Pich will apply for some of these projects, and if approved, the participants will be able to re-gather.