Establishment of civic know-how and training centre for making rural youth active who are living in South Plain Region of Hungary

Overall aim of the project:
On 12th February 2013 the second NGO Fund of the EEA/Norway Grants was officially launched and concerning that the Youth Alliance of South Plain Region (Dél-alföldi Ifjúsági Szövetség) wishes to submit a project proposal to the Macro project II. thematic framework in the sake of rural youth of South Plain Region in order to make their civic life more active. In the framework of our project, the Youth Alliance of South Plain Region (Dél-alföldi Ifjúsági Szövetség), as main applicant, would like to establish and create such a civic training centre which aims at preparing and supporting non – governmental organisations (NGOs) those represent rural youth from South Plain Region in order to tackle problems of young people from rural area of South Plain Region successfully.

Background of the main applicant from Hungary:
The Youth Alliance of South Plain Region (Dél-alföldi Ifjúsági Szövetség) was established at 1996, since then it has been operating in the areas of Bács – Kiskun, Csongrád and Békés counties. The Alliance coordinates and manages the activities of associations, social constitutions, youth communities, youth clubs in the Region which deal with and organise topics and themes concerning agricultural activities, folk traditions’ protection, cultural and leisure time activities, environmental protection, Euro – Atlantic enlargement and they arrange the activities and programmes of their members in related to these topics. The real strength in the Alliance activities is to create and foster the local visibility, to prepare, run and evaluate programmes for community development, then taking the main coordinator role in several different types of projects, activities and programmes. We have done a successful exchange partnership with young people from Switzerland, France and Denmark till now. The main themes of these exchange partnerships were the integration of young people living directly from agriculture.

Origin and context of the project:
Young people from our Region face with diverse challenges. The general problem is the high rate of unemployment among young people. The number of young people who is able to start working in agricultural area is very law. The reason behind is the law income of the agriculture sector. In the Region, nor the service provider sector, neither the industrial sector are not able to employ the labour overflow therefore migration among young people is increasing into the bigger cities of the Region, into Budapest and Western part of the country then into Western Europe. The need of migration from the country based on financial reasons and besides this, the negative impressions of Hungarian political behaviour and democratic political life give a huge impetus for mainly young people to leave the country behind. Young people mainly have extreme democracy – deficit experience which influences their future visions a lot. The biggest challenges for the Region and within the settlements are the depopulation and the migration. Problem occurs regarding to the unequal regional development within the civic network of the Region. In the economically underdeveloped areas there are enormous gap concerning civic initiatives and there is a lack of the civic organisational background which is needed to support that. The problems of civic life based on mainly missing financial resources, then the lack of international and national professional experiences. A very serious problem occurs concerning young people who loose their relationship with their reality, specifically having physical segregation. Due to the influence of digital globalisation, it is more and more challenging to motivate young people to do something for their local communities, it is even harder to take them out from their virtual world. Hereby, similar to the international trends, the local cultural heritage is broken, local communities become uniform.

Activities and methodology of the project:
In the framework of the project we would like to establish such a civic training and know – how centre which can give support for young people and civic organisations in order to adjust to the recent situation then prepare the target group to handle the possible arising problems. The Youth Alliance of South Plain Region (Dél-alföldi Ifjúsági Szövetség) has an ownership of a farm and we wish to establish this centre there. In the framework of this project, the Youth Alliance of South Plain Region (Dél-alföldi Ifjúsági Szövetség) with the cooperation of member organisations and the newly involved national and international civic organisations will organise professional forums, trainings, conferences in order to establish such a know – how centre which can offer solutions to young people and civic organisations on the arising problems of the Region. The involved civic organisations will share and exchange their experiences, suggestions for solutions, good practices regarding to operating civic organisations and dealing with certain problems.
One of the essential elements of our project is to strengthen the active role of our involved partner organisations in the political level of the society and to improve their skills concerning interest enforcements within the decision making processes. Our planned training centre will be the fundamental base for newly established civil organisations and provide all the needed support for them as mentor organisation in order to strengthen the civic life. For defining the appropriate answers and solutions, we will prepare and propose such types of training activities which can reflect on the problems we have already identified and on the emerging regional and local problems as outcomes of our common professional forums.
Besides running training and know – how centre there, the renovated building of the farm will support the protection of cultural traditions and providing good practices for practical usage and solution of those. During the renovation, we will use such an innovative solutions e.g. concerning the way how energy supply will be provided which can be a good practice for everyone who will visit to the farm. Regarding to the protection of cultural traditions, we will ensure appropriate place for presenting different cultural and agricultural collections and we will create a mini experimental agricultural holding where we can introduce and present traditional and innovative manufacture technique then our partners can learn these techniques in practice there. We would like to establish and develop such a centre which can provide traditional and innovative solutions in order to give a long term improvement perspective for the youth of the Region and for the NGOs who’s directly work with young people

Profile of the Norwegian partners:
As good practice, we would like to follow the Norwegian People’s Academy Model/Open University/Adult Education centre, so our training centre will be operated as non-formal educational relay. For the success of the realisation of the project, we are looking for such partners who have experiences to put the People’s Academy/Open University/Adult Education centre model in practice, nevertheless they face with similar problems to ours in their working areas or/and having successful solutions/methods to deal with these problems. It is essential for us to adapt international good practices and techniques/methods in order to have appropriate solutions for the problems of our Region. If this Model is succeeding, we will build it up as a network, though we will need lots international experience to do that. We would like to find such organisations that have a mission to deal with the problems of people living in rural areas as well as having such types of experiences. In the project we would like to involve such type of organisations from Norway, who are more improved within community developments than us, more experienced urging the active participation and citizenship, having more practice to educate young people for democratic way of thinking and to improve civic initiative skills.
We don’t have any financial involvement from our partners!

More information you can find from the EEA/Norway Grants here:

http://www.demnet.hu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=372%3Aelerhetek-az-egtnorveg-civil-tamogatasi-alap-palyazatai&catid=81%3Anorveg-civil-tamogatasi-alap-2013-2014&Itemid=135&lang=en

and here:

http://www.norvegcivilalap.hu/en/node/657