Six volunteers from Macedonia participated in the Erasmus+ project “Volunteering Tool for Youth Empowerment” that took place in Obzor, Bulgaria from 31.08 to 08.09.2019. The volunteers were welcomed by Festivalna Fondatsia “Morsko Konche“ and were part of youth exchange with 42 participants from 6 different countries and with different backgrounds in order to broaden their horizons in the field of volunteering.

Participating in the project “Volunteering – Tool for Youth Empowerment”, through numerous interesting workshops, these young people were part of the following activities: changing young people’s attitudes towards understanding volunteering as a way of actively acting for the benefit of the community, enhancing the quality of volunteering activities in partner countries, local communities of organizations and their target groups. The youth exchange was hosted by Festivalna Fondatsia “Morsko Konche” in cohesion with six organizations, which are TdG (Italy), VCS (Macedonia), IYACA (Turkey), POD (Spain), Asociatia Culturala Moldavia (Romania) and PRAXIS (Greece), and the project was co-founded by the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Union. The main objective of the training activities was to promote volunterisam and to inform young people about the volunteering opportunities that ERASMUS+ offers and supports. The youngsters were informed about the different volunteering types and activities. Throughout the whole project, different media material was made which promotes the idea of volunteering.

As dissemination of knowledge out of this youth exchange, we, the Macedonian volunteers, organized two volunteering activities. First volunteering activity was sharing our knowledge and experiences gained during this ERASMUS+ youth exchange on the stand of Volunteers Centre Skopje as a part of the event for the day of civil society organizations. The second volunteering activity was organized with the kids from the special elementary school “Zlaten Sremec” for children with delay in psychophysical development and autism. Our volunteers together with the children made a workshop for “The filigree in Macedonian costumes.”

Aleksandra Davitkovska