Italian Team
Follow-Up Activity
On May 24th our organization, ETV EuroTreviso, had a workshop with a group of Youth Workers from Treviso in order to inform them about what we did during the first part of the project in Cyprus.
We proposed a series of activities to the children similar to those carried out during the project last March, including some energizers and mapping the city to identify its pros and cons. We also tried to identify with the participants what youth initiatives they know about and what we should focus on to better include young people in the community. The output of this meeting was to discover that young people feel abandoned both inside and outside the school environment and that they wish there were better channels of information, as they sometimes do not know where to look for opportunities such as jobs, internships, cultural exchanges and volunteering activities. Within our organization, we are writing a plan for the dissemination and integration of young people in our community so that we can give future generations more opportunities to get in touch with the Erasmus world.
In addition to the activities with high school students in our town, we wanted to do a dissemination activity with a group of university students from the University of Siena regarding the activities and problems that arose during the activities in Cyprus. The participants encountered the same problems that emerged during the mapping of Italy. As the participants came from different parts of Italy, we were able to grasp the various problems that the different areas possess. What surprised us during the meeting was the emergence of a common problem: the lack of information. In Italy it is common to have to search for information and once found it is not clear and comprehensive. Our commitment will be to contact the university community and point out this lack so that young people can be more active within the university community.
NICOLE ROSO: The participation of the first part of the project Business in the digital age was pretty interesting as we worked on youth opportunities and we focused our attention on the youth needs in the society. I personally enjoyed all the activities organized by Acpelia as they were able to really challenge our minds. The activity I liked the most was the debate, as it was interesting to hear other people's opinions regarding the digital era. I just wished we had more to discuss as many people were engaged in the conversation. Thanks to the project and the conversation I had with the participants I started to think about what my country actually does for the youth and I realized that we do have some initiatives by our government but they're not enough. Italy needs to work more on the youth opportunities and to spread those we already have because too many people do not know about them. I'm glad we had time to explore the area and to visit Limassol. I wished we had more time during the cultural night as each country had many interesting things to say about their culture and traditions - 10 minutes were not enough (maybe 20 can work better). The project was well organized in terms of activities and schedule, I hope the second part will follow this path.
ERIKA SALVÀ: I really enjoyed the project organised by ACPELIA organisation, in terms of activities and hospitality. The organisers were very welcoming to us and the activities were useful to develop a wider awareness related to inclusion, digitalisation and youth work. This project helped me in developing my ability to communicate and to understand my environment. It helped me to not be afraid of people and that every single person we meet will contribute somehow to the person we become. My opinion is that nowadays, especially in the labour market, it is crucial to be able to communicate, to be able to synergistically cooperate, to be as dynamic as possible, because it will impact not only the people around us, but also ourselves. I am also glad for the amazing people I met and I wish we will establish an even deeper connection when we will meet again in Georgia. The area we visited (Pissouri and Limassol, mostly) was beautiful and I would have appreciated to discover more, also in terms of culture and traditions (the food was amazing, too).