Contributed by Solidarity Tracks.
Follow-up steps towards youth engagement
Solidarity Tracks held the third transnational meeting of our project "Power Youth Up" in Lefkas, Greece, from the 11th to the 15th of October. The project intends to improve community spaces by adopting new methodologies and approaches to involve young people, develop their creativity and strengthen the role of youth work in Europe's construction.
The European partners were hosted by Solidarity Tracks NGO in Lefkas, Greece, to follow up with the project stages. During this meeting, we shared about our good practices implemented. We planned new approaches, focusing on creating methods that encourage youth creativity, experimentation, and active participation locally, both online and on-site.
What happened
During this meeting, we had the chance to meet with a decision maker, a representative of Lefkas municipality. We discussed the reality of youngsters and their local support. As Lefkada town does not have a youth centre, we understood more deeply the importance of the local need for youngsters to benefit from a community centre as a space for empowerment and creativity.
We visited several entities in Lefkas: the work office of Solidarity Tracks organisation, where we met volunteers participating in the European Solidarity Corps program. The volunteers shared about their activities, willing to help the local community following principles of solidarity and sustainable development, such as creating furniture from recycled material and developing creative projects to rehabilitate abandoned spaces.
We also discovered one local initiative supported by youngsters: the Folklore Museum of Kalamitsi village. A few years ago, local youth initiated the creation of this museum, which presents a collection of traditional items to value the village's cultural heritage. The young volunteers supported by Solidarity Tracks also helped this initiative by setting up the exhibition space and creating a mural representing traditional figures.
The meeting was a cornerstone for improving the action plan and setting new project task deadlines. There were sharing moments and ideas for better cooperation on both local and international levels.
"Power Youth Up" is a cooperation partnership for creativity and innovation co-financed by the Erasmus+ program in collaboration with Youth Coop (Portugal), Associação Novo Mundo (Portugal), FITT Timișoara (Romania), Centro Fonti San Lorenzo (Italy), Solidarity Tracks (Greece) and P.O.D. Association (Spain).