European Youth Against Antigypsyism (EYAA)

By JL • 6 years ago

Feb
2018

1 February, 2018 – 31 January, 2020
Various locations

The Association EPEKA, Soc. Ent., is starting a project European Youth Against Antigypsyism (EYAA). The project European Youth Against Antigypsyism (EYAA) will establish a strong international network of youth and Roma focused organizations coming from 5 European countries: Slovenia, the Netherlands, Croatia, Bulgaria and Italy.

The central task of the partner consortium is to develop an innovative and advanced model of education modules, which focus on the importance of establishing long lasting relationships between youth coming from different ethnical and cultural backgrounds. In this way EYAA is in fact a parallel and also an upgrade of projects focusing solely on the empowerment of Roma youth. We will develop educational modules that will enable youth workers to implement activities aimed at: increasing the sensibility of youth in relation to other cultures, increasing the levels of active citizenship and participation in social processes among young people, developing critical and media literacy, soft skills and gaining the knowledge of organizing cultural and sport events. A very important part of this will be fostering meaningful interaction between Roma and non-Roma youth, which is one of the most sustainable ways of fighting discrimination and antigypsyism in the long term. On the other hand this will also enable Roma youth to shed the stereotypes they believe about their non-Roma counterparts. Thus they will also expand their social circles, which is an important step towards integration and participation in broader social processes. The modules will be made of a small part of formal education methods and a far larger part of informal learning, learning by doing, group activities, role-play, use of ICT, field work etc.

The modules will be developed for youth workers, who work with youth with fewer opportunities (e.g. Roma) and youth from the majority population as well. The consortium will design the modules through several stages with multiple evaluations leading to a high quality intellectual result that will be developed even after the end of the project life cycle. A real-life test of the modules will be the youth worker training held in Rome, which will also offer critical insight to perfect the modules. In the creation of the modules we will use the rich and diverse array of experience of the partners and also of outside organizations, youth workers and Roma and non-Roma youth. The finished modules will be presented at an international multiplicative event — conference — in Slovenia.