Verbattle Academy

Dear friends and potential partners!

QUICK CALL FOR PROJECT PARTNERSHIP:

Please let me invite you to the Czech Republic, because this will be the first Verbattle Academy in Europe. We like traditional youth exchanges, where we and the partners prepare activities for the participants. This time however the plan is to let the participants explore facts and policies in their field of interest on their own… plus still prepare part of the activities of course.

It is nice to teach young people about civil society, democracy, active citizenship, leadership and support it with education in the right set of soft skills. Even though our lecturers are partly public figures or work in related fields, we can hardly provide first-hand experience and opportunity to get to know individual fields of interest at the same time. Therefore, we have decided to invite experts, activists, scientists, or other public figures (let us call them mentors) to lead a team of participants for a couple of days to show them the “reality”.

The exchange is to be held in August 2021 preferably in a rural region of the Czech Republic. We are looking for three partners, each is to bring a group of three girls, three boys and two leaders. Together we will split the participants into eight teams of three and define eight fields of interest and provide at least one volunteer “mentor” for each group to see his work in real-life. All of that will be supported by our effort to bring participants closer to understanding the media and equip them with skills necessary to a) assume an active role in civil society (in a summerly informal way) and b) learn to process information the right way (avoid fake news), because the world is not black and white.

Participants will learn how to build arguments and how to speak in public. They will learn about media, information manipulation and will try civil journalism themselves. They will also be given a lecture about reportage photography and use of social media not only in civil journalism but to maybe raise support and awareness for their cause.

These educational activities will of course be combined with outdoor games. This project is for those, who want to learn, who want to enjoy a couple of relaxed days in Czech countryside, but also for those and only for those, who are excited to take part in the activities and really enjoy the opportunity.

The fields of interests will be: European citizenship in 2021+, Gun control across Europe – liberty or safety, Global climate change challenge – water supplies, Protection of apex predators in Europe, Immigration – the right to choose or the right not to welcome, Fake news in social media – state ordered censorship on social media + let’s keep two more open at this time to see what will arise in a year from now. In the end, there will be presentations of each groups’ activities.

Programme: Erasmus+, KA1
Number of partners: 3
Eligible organizations: NGOs with registered OID nr. and all necessary documents uploaded
Eligible countries: Programme countries (EU member countries, FYROM, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Turkey). We will try to choose partners to balance unique perspectives from western / former communist countries.

Please state in your application (response) if you would be able to send at least one leader, who might fit as a mentor in aforementioned fields. They will not have the mentor role, but it would be nice to have people like that in our team.

Activity 1 – APV: Czech Republic, May 2021.
Activity 2 – Exchange: Czech Republic, 14.-25. August 2021 (incl. travel days = activities on 15.-24.8.)