The youth exchange was approved by the European Union, so in September we’ll have our first youth exchange in Faenza!

30 young europeans (including 5 italians from Faenza) will gather to discuss and create ideas about creativity, equity and tolerance.

Stay tuned, and wish us good luck! 😉

Here’s a description of the project:

Why this project As an association which aims to promote social inclusion through creative activities, we want to apply storytelling to the asylum seekers and migrants situation, in the frame of non formal education.

We believe that empowering and motivating youngsters with a creative approach is one of the best ways to share experiences and ideas, promoting diversity and intercultural dialogue which will eventually lead to increasing tolerance and respect of human rights.

Also, we believe that freedom, tolerance and cultural diversity stimulate creativity and vice versa: they go together.

Because in our local community we host foreigners (mostly from Nigeria and Mali) and the theme of migrants is now central in the European society, we wish to address the topic in a creative way, building stories to compare the lives of youngsters with different backgrounds, European and African, to find a common ground, understand each other better, share the positive aspects of our cultures and learn from each other.

European youngsters and African asylum seekers have certainly different stories and backgrounds, however we believe that cultural differences are a value, and furthermore we think that creativity is a mean of union and human brotherhood as we all are creative beings.

We aim to encourage the participants to get inspiration from each other and from the stories that they will hear, to write them down and share them through the new media as blogs and social media pages.

The asylum seekers situation is dividing the European citizens who often hold opposite opinions on this topic.

As an association that is working to provide the asylum seekers in our local community with media literacy, we believe that it is crucial to provide European youngsters with the possibility to know personally a group of asylum seekers and to encourage them to share the stories that they hear, or the ideas that are born in the meeting of different cultures.

The main need that ‘We are all Equal in Creativity’ addresses is that of a common ground between young European and young Africans and we believe that it can be found in creativity and storytelling.

This will lead to a better understanding of different cultures and empower the participants into being active citizens and actors of social change in their communities.

Furthermore, in our western society less and less importance is given to creativity as a way of life; the result-focused approach risks to discourage young people from trying to approach a creative practice.

We want to provide youngsters with the necessary knowledge and skills to introduce a creative practice in their daily life as storytelling is a powerful mean of expression which allows to formulate opinions and develop critical thinking.

Image source