Academy of Dreamers - ECO 2018

Aims & objectives

Context:
"What can I do?" "What can a teenager do?" These are the questions which you can hear very often. There are many people, especially young people, who are worried about the preoccupying situation in which our countries and the whole planet is and plan actions which they can implement to change it or at least alleviate it.
One more time, the lack of information or, in some cases, the information overload, limits the capacity to act for those who want to make a positive impact on their environment. It is not easy to identify what actions are best suited to make a change which now, more than ever, we see as necessary.

The project is focused deliberately on young people with fewer opportunities, learning or other difficulties in combination with a low level of English, who are usually excluded from this type of projects because of the difficulties in the communication.
As the linguistic barrier will be bigger than normally, we have decided that the project's activities will be accompanied by a linguistic workshop, aimed at the vocabulary of the activities of that day. The aim of the linguistic workshop is to facilitate the communication among all.

OBJETIVES
- To facilitate the access of young people with less opportunities and learning difficulties into the European projects.
- To improve the communicative abilities in English language
- Increase the level of knowledge about sustainability
- Reflect on the environmental situation in Europe and in the world
- Learn to live in a healthier and more ecological way
- Make participants the eco-ambassadors of the knowledge they acquired during the exchange.

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

Participants: AJS(Spain), EUfemia (Italy), NDSFUND (Poland), UPGRADE (Romania)
Total: 52 participants (12 youth workers + 42 young people 13 - 18 years old
Team: Lucyna Lewandowska, Monia Wisniewska, Antonio Gomez Romano and Sergio Perez.

Training methods used & main activities

The methodology is based on the non-formal education principles, facilitating and structured but a flexible frame for the learning process' development of the participants. Following you can see the details of the most important principles which will guide the activities:
- Importance of playing and experimenting
- Importance of group learning process
- Horizontality in the relationships
- Balance between the theory and practice

Outcomes of the activity

Young people more aware of the environmental problems and the ecological footprint we all leave on Earth. Youth with strong commitment solving the environmental problems and specific tools to achieve it.

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

My role in this project has been the coordination of the whole and facilitating training and linguistic sessions.

I worked on this training for 8 days as a full time trainer.