Timiș County Youth Foundation (FITT), together with partners from Ukraine, Germany, and France, has initiated a project under ESC Volunteering Teams in High Priority Areas that will take place in Timisoara, Romania.
YOU FOR YOUTH will unite young Romanians (in the country), Ukrainians, French and Germans in balanced teams of volunteers (¼ of each group) aged between 18 and 30 years old. Volunteers will start their activity in March 2024. Each team will have a 2-month short-term experience.
Our partners for this project are NFT as the national partner of FITT within the project, Kharkiv NGO Stella (from Ukraine), CRISTEEL Association as the leading French partner and The Collective for a European Civic Service will be the national partner for CRISTEEL. The Bildungsnetzwerk Magdeburg gGmbH is a partner from Germany.
The activities implemented by the volunteers will be:
- Educational activities (Human Rights Education, Education for Democratic Citizenship, activities for skills development, language clubs, etc.);
- Artistic activities (participatory arts – painting, digital arts, ceramic, etc.);
- Cultural activities (jam sessions, small concerts, theatre plays, impro theatre workshops, etc.);
- Sports, socializing and free time activities (activities aiming to create the context for socializing, constructively spending free time, etc).
Young people will have the opportunity to:
- Develop communication skills in English in a diverse environment
- Learn some basic Romanian
- Learn to adapt and be more flexible in a professional and youth-friendly environment while dealing with unexpected changes and different challenges
- While organizing different types of activities, develop knowledge and new skills in the topic of human rights, inclusion, war risks, citizenship, safeguarding
- Develop soft skills, empathy and ability to give psychological support
- Learn to engage and promote in the local community, activate the youth, and generate a social impact regarding new challenges, war crises, refugees, etc.
We hope that this experience will help our volunteers to gain and strengthen different competences. Romanian and Ukrainian volunteers will have an opportunity to prolong their volunteering experience on this topic in France or Germany for 6 months. This will help Romanians to know more about challenges refugees face and learn new tools how to help in different situations and for Ukrainians to take an action and become their own actors of challenges and feel less of a victim. We also hope that the project will help to promote the European Solidarity Corps and volunteering among French and German young people as well.