The Octanous NPO in close collaboration with the social cooperative enterprise “Pramata & Thamata” and in cooperation with 9 other associations from different EU countries have sufficiently implemented the Eight for Great (EfG) project concerning a training course for youth workers funded by the Erasmus + / Youth Program, in an effort to tackle unemployment, namely youth unemployment, as a result of the recent European economic crisis.
The project objectives were the promotion of three European initiatives, i.e. the ‘European Framework for the Key Competencies for LLL’, the ‘Youth Guarantee’ scheme and the ‘European Solidarity Corps’ and the identification of ways, areas, associations and youth workers who would be trained in order to be involved to the development of an informal network for better support of these three European initiatives as part of youth exchange projects.
The EfG project lasted 10 days and was implemented in Kalamata and Athens. Fifty-one youth workers were actively involved, coming from 10 different EU countries, namely Estonia, Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Greece. A significant number of citizens and stakeholders of the local community also ad hoc participated.
The activities of the daily program included inputs, interactive presentations, introductions, various creative workshops, discussion and working groups, study visits to local business and socio-cultural institutions, educational excursions to the archaeological sites of Olympia and Messina and a visit to the Hellenic Parliament.
Participants had the opportunity to be trained in various thematic. They improved their communication and social skills, they developed their planning competencies in new collaborative relations, they got acquainted with new knowledge or they developed existing one in social intervention techniques and methods, in parliamentary processes and function of democracy, in coping with different issues or problems. They improved their ability in developing community-based initiatives and they identified ways of European intercultural youth cooperation, especially in youth exchange projects. They were sensitized and became familiar with the content and importance of the three European initiatives mentioned above for the expansion of social cohesion and European solidarity. In addition, they were encouraged to promote them into their organization and to other institutions of their local community and to implement and multiply mobility initiatives and multilateral youth exchange projects at the European level.
