Bel qUEl

Bel Quel is a youth and social development association active in the fields of youth policies, social promotion, active citizenship and international cooperation. Our organization is quiet “young”(2014), but it’s the result of a long and fruitful path of participation promoted by the municipality of Sala Bolognese and a group of active young citizens. At the beginning (2009), we started as Forum Giovani, otherwise a youth center supported by the public administration, where policy makers and young people collaborated together to foster projects and programs for the local community. For almost five years, Forum Giovani has been a very important link between the local institutions and the young people of Sala Bolognese, organizing and managing cultural activities and events with the precious help of the administration. Forum Giovani has built a really good network of relationships with young people and other cultural organizations and carried out many initiatives such as a musical contest of new bands, various cultural events with the help of young people directly involved in the organization, art exhibitions and film festivals. Our activities also involve language classes, educational projects and international projects. Over the time we took up a path of autonomy and we started to work as a cultural association with the name of Bel Quel. We work to promote active citizenship and the participation of young people in the democratic life of our community. We implement our projects not only in the area of our municipality but also in the whole district of Terred’acqua, an union of 6 municipalities in the west district of Bologna. The main mission of Bel Quel is to promote the youth empowerment and to contribute to give value at the personal competencies of every subject it’s working with. We daily work hard with our association trying to involved young people in order to become active citizens. Our projects could be good examples of interaction between young people and policy makers, because since the begin of our experience we created a strong network and collaboration. All the issues that we dealt with, such as social inclusion of people with fewer opportunities, active citizenship, youth unemployment, personal growth of young people and cultural promotion, have been always developed to increase the participation of young people and to enhance their awareness of the social context and encourage critical thinking. We have organized courses, international meetings, workshops, cultural events, exhibitions and mobility opportunity for young people. Now we intend to continue working on similar initiatives. In particular we organize courses o foreign languages aimed at teens and adults, taught by experienced teachers or college students from our organization, courses in use of PC aimed at adults and the elderly who don't have particular familiarity with technology. Thank to a strong relation with the schools of the local area, we had the opportunity to offer didactical workshops in order to awake young people to the culture of legality and active and responsible citizenship through non-formal education activities, meetings with experts and participating processes. Also we organised a workshop in the primary schools called "coding for fun" in order teach the student the basic of logical thinking and a ethical way to use computers and internet. We also promote career guidance, for student who want to go to university or enter the world of work, and courses to spread information about opportunities of mobility in Europe (stage, apprenticeships, study programmes,...) with the aim to sensitize people to European culture and its values