Be active, the world needs you

The main reason why we would like to carry out this project is that we strongly believe that raising awareness among youth can make a significant improvement in tomorrow's society and also making the youth understand that they are the ones who have the power and the responsibility to change something in today's society. The objectives of this project are raising awareness among European youth about their ability to make a change, because the participants will be trained to acknowledge in what way they can go back to their own countries and implement principles of active citizenship. In this training the aim is to motivate young people to put in practice in their own societies of provenience the principles of active citizenship. This matter links to the objectives of the Erasmus+ programme because it helps people understand that knowledge is not only a personal achievement , but knowledge is power and fuel for building a better world. Through this project we seek to address relevant issues and needs of todays society such as the need of understanding the importance of being an active citizen in your own community, how can society benefit from young people getting involved in solving actual social matters, changing the mentality that young people have no interest in improving the future's society.
Active citizenship means people getting involved in their own society, the local communities and democracy at all levels, from towns to cities to nationwide activity. Active citizenship can be as small as a campaign to clean up your street or as big as educating young people about democratic values, skills and participation. Active citizenship is one of the most important steps towards healthy societies especially in new democracies.As we understand it, active citizenship is a combination of knowledge, attitude, skills and actions that aim to contribute to building and maintaining a democratic society. Active Citizenship supports democratic cooperation that is based on the acceptance of universal human rights and the rule of law, values diversity and includes the whole community. Education towards gaining this knowledge and developing and practicing the skills take place in all levels of our shared social life, but schools play a very important role in it.

More and more, we see that extreme solutions are in demand when it comes to Europe’s problems. Active citizenship has a crucial role to play in this context to allow citizens to interrogate real solutions to problems rather than indulging in blaming each other for problems, discrimination and other tactics peddled by extremists.
In other words, 5 people from 6 different European countries will gather for a week in Limassol, Cyprus to implement the project ' Be active, the world needs you" . As we can deduce from the name of the project, this youth exchange will cover mainly the topic of active citizenship nowadays. Our main aim is to focus and reflect on the concept of active citizenship from it's origin until now and as well, how the economic crisis has been affecting it's values. The project involves countries with differences in terms of political and economical development. Therefore, the participants will have the opportunity to understand and evaluate the situation in the other countries by comparison. Through non-formal education techniques, the participants will discover what exactly lies inside of the words "active citizenship" , analyze and mentally project how their perfect state would look like, and also what lies behind the social improvement movements. Through various activities they will compare the different social situations relatively in each of the involved countries and get an idea of the European policies for youth. By using their digital competences, they will create videos on the topic such as: How they can become valuable citizens in their own countries? Which kind of policies should be provided by national governments or International commissions in order to improve the situation? All this videos will be shared via different promotional tools on a local, regional and European level. The project is scheduled to be held in summer , term of 1 – 8th September 2016 in Limassol.

The main objectives of the project:
- To increase awareness about the concept of active citizenship
- To increase awareness about social crisis
- To inform youth about the role of European Union as a guarantor of active citizenship values
- Creating an atmosphere of cooperation, tolerance and mutual respect between people and cultures