GrenzenLos!

Three of us met during their long-term EVS in Georgia and Armenia in and we included a fourth friend who is very interested in the topic and Youth Work in our team. The current development and political situation in the countries and cultures we immersed in during our voluntary service in the Caucasus region is still of interest to us. We can see a lot of parallels in the main issues and concerns in our home country and other European countries and believe in finding solutions through collaboration and empowerment of young people. This is why we decided to combine our interest, skills and passion to take action as an informal group. We intend to promote active citizenship and human rights, foster the understanding of different cultural values, the aspirations and needs of different social and cultural groups and enhance the professional skills of young people. We want to encourage the acquisition of intercultural competencies that we found so valuable during our EVS experience in order to create a mutual understanding between different social groups and cultures that enables people to live together in tolerance and peace. Through the involvement in international projects, we want to enable other young people to also develop their skills in the field of teambuilding, cooperation and entrepreneurship and support them in their learning. All members of our group have been previously involved in youth work and hold positions of leadership within groups. We have also been involved in several Erasmus+ Youth Exchanges as support person, co-leader for sessions and also helped with administrative tasks, such as the organisation of transport arrangements, communication with partner organisations, evaluation and writing reports. All members of our group have been participants of Erasmus+ training courses for trainers and enhanced their skills i.e. in the field of human rights, No Hate Speech, visual tools, team building and creative journalism. We implemented our first Youth Exchange "Refugee Crisis - Inspire to (Re)Act!" in Aghveran, Yerevan in September 2017 (7 partners, 35 participants).