Youth exchange about environmental awareness and art/crafts

Young people from 3 countries will get together at a location in Spain and during one week will engage in activities to improve their environmental awareness, explore good practices and behaviours and get creative making art or other useful objects from waste materials. All this through non formal activities like craft workshops, role plays, eco actions, etc.
Our project revolves around the key words: downcycle, reduce, reuse, recycle, upcycle, arts and crafts.
The program also includes getting to know each other, our countries and cultures.

Planned dates:
The exchange is planned to take place from 03 September to 10 September 2021.

Venue:
The venue could be the historic town of Toledo (Spain). Alternatively, we are exploring other options closer to nature, such as a natural park with beautiful lakes or a mountain area just outside of Madrid. The venue is still to be defined depending on mobility restrictions due to Covid-19 and other practical aspects.

Profile of participants:
- Group from Spain:
The Spanish group is already formed of 12 young people from our town Ciudad Real. Together with a team leader from our association Participa Joven CR the group has been preparing the project during the last few months.

- Groups from other countries:
VERY IMPORTANT! We are looking for partner organisations that do regular youth work at local level (could be in youth centres, clubs, associations, different activities, etc) and already have a pool of local young people from where to create the group for this exchange. We will not accept any partners who form a group through open calls which ends in selecting participants that don't know each other previously.

As for the young participants:
We are looking for young people who already form part of a local group (your organisation, club, association or any other local initiative) and are eager to join us, get to know each other, explore the project’s topics and enjoy the activities together. Please, no groups formed through open calls who arrive at the project without knowing their own team and leader.

We are looking for:
- 2 groups of young people from 2 other countries
- Each group should include 10 young people (age 16-30) and 1 leader (age 18+).
- The groups should be formed by the beginning of July latest and should be available to join 2-3 online meetings in July and beginning of August to meet the other participants; talk about practical aspects like travel, accommodations, etc.; get familiar with the program of the exchange and give ideas and suggestions about it. It would be great if each group could take part in the preparation of some of the activities (according to their abilities, nothing too difficult).

IMPORTANT!
It is very important that you only join this project if your participants are motivated by the topic and meeting young people from other countries. Please don’t contact us if you are only motivated by the travel opportunity. Our team of young people has spent a lot of time and care in the preparation of this project and we would like to meet young people who are motivated and eager to share and enjoy the experience fully.

You can check the attached message from our team to get to know us and our story better.

If you are interested in our project send us you PIF and include your website/social networks. Email: participajovencr@gmail.com (Maria)