‘FEW + MORE = INCLUSION’

After my one-year European Voluntary Service (EVS) experience in France where I worked on the development and implementation of youth mobility projects, Volunteers Center Skopje asked me if I would like to participate on a Contact Making Seminar (CMS) that will connect experienced youth workers who will discuss on many topics connected with young people with fewer opportunities with a special focus on people with disabilities and their inclusion in society.

The main objective of this kind of seminars is to give their participants the opportunity to meet new partners from different countries interested in organizing and implementing new projects in the framework of Erasmus+ Programme, and with whom during the seminar they can start working on concrete projects. During my EVS I have got some valuable experience in the domain of youth mobility and the work with young people with fewer opportunities, so my head was bubbling with ideas for new projects, and I immediately said ‘YES’.

Ready in no time, with the other participant from Macedonia, Goran Galabov, a highly experienced person in the youth field and the work with people with disabilities, we were already on our way to Kaštela, a small town in the surroundings of Split in Croatia. This beautiful town on the Dalmatian coast hosted us and youth workers from eight other countries such as Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Poland, Romania, Spain and Turkey for a week. Having great working conditions and a pleasant atmosphere, as well as being surrounded by motivated people we were ready for the challenge.

The project was very well-organized. We started by getting to know each other and team-building activities, as well as with inter-cultural nights in order to create cohesion in the group. Then, we continued by some role-plays and a visit of a daily care center for young people with disabilities that allowed us to step into the shoes of these people and to better understand their needs. We also had a conference on this topic with the mayor of Split.

After a very pleasant cultural visit of Split where we enjoyed the splendid beauty of this Dalmatian pearl, we have got back to our working room in order to explain the Erasmus+ framework. In the next step, according to our interests and ideas for a new project, we divided ourselves in several working groups, and we started working on concrete projects. My team worked on developing a youth exchange in the environmental domain. If everything goes as planned, you will soon be invited to apply for participating in the project.

And in that way, we got to the end of the seminar in a blink of an eye.

Finally, I think that during this week we made some friendship that will last a lifetime, we shared lots of positive experiences and we started developing some new interesting projects.

Author: Maja Bibanovska