Day 5
In framework of the »youth empowerment for inclusion and capacity building» 5th day.
For some people it was hard to get up, because at the night we celebrated Anne’s birthday. After breakfast we had energizers, called “who, haa , hee ” to get more energy .
After we got the schedule and program from the nice trainers, who quickly did a wrap-up of the previous day evaluation.
When the evaluation was done, the presentation of workshops started. The instruction and question have been given in previous day. It included tasks about inclusion and questions were created by participants, who had to divide into groups and went on to work on one question each, which was selected directly by the groups.
The presentations tried to answer the questions ” How can you measure inclusion and minority ” , ” If inclusion is forced- is it really inclusion ” , “What is successful inclusion ? ” and ” What influenced your values ?”.
The last presentation, ” What influenced your values?” was interactive, outside the building. Participants had to answer the questions on a line between Yes and No.
The result was : ” Yes ” – Propaganda , Work Place , Book , films , Family and other ,” No ” education , social background , religions and other things . After it a discussion followed on “What Is inclusion? “ and “What is participation ?”. Definitions from the UNHCR, Council of Europe and the European Commission were used as a background.
After Coffee Break started NGO Fair + sharing best practices. Participants from Youth NGO had to prepare on the flipcharts their organization background, mission and at the same time had to think and answer on the question, what was their role, what benefits they have gotten and other.
There was presented NGO list: Citoyen des ruesinternational , Caritaz , Support to life , association Psychea , 40Tilks/40Walks , Community Centre , Never Give Up Foundation , Tanext Academy , Open University for High School , Helping Hand , Youth Alternative , The Vinitsia regional centre for information/ Kreativ , Armenia Ministry of Labor and Social Affair and other .
There was different experience that the participant shared to each other’s. After NGO Fare was free time and after it we enjoyed Harvest Festival and Traditional Dinner . Harvest Festival and Traditional Dinner was hold in GetUp Restaurant, beautiful place with pleasure nature and fresh air, little cottages, river and extra. Could you image, that for celebrating the traditional dinner or party, you had to travel by the oldest bus , that is half destroyed , but we have gotten this experience. We went to festival by the yellow oldest Soviet Union bus and during driving we try enjoyed the 20th century with modern tools, like self-portraits, also jokes, singing.
Harvest festival was full of Armenian food, handmade, there was opportunity to buy traditional souvenirs, enjoying eating, also make funny photos, dancing. We followed the life music and dancing till we were not being called for the dinner. Dinner stared by separating vegetarians from other participants who eats the meet. During the dinner process at the same time there was music, dances and participants enjoyed it. It was nice, after coming back with the same bus, all participants had free time, and they go on with discussion and sharing their values, experience.
Interview with Astghik Hovhannisyan : ” My work experience was very challenging . I was a social worker in the ministry oflabor and social affairs one of our functions was finding proper jobs forunemployed people. Special focuses was on refugees from Syria. It was really a hard work, we’ve had both, successful andunsuccessfully cases. Unfortunately the bad practices are more often .One of the best practices was with a syrian-armenian girl. She was atheatre director with no experience, after long searches we at least managed to organize an internship for her in one of Armenian theatres .She was very excited and worked really very hard. After a three-month experiences they offer her a full-time job. She was sograteful to us that sent an appreciation letter to the Government about our department. We really put much effort, and it’s always wonderful to see a positive result, and understand that you have made at least a little change”.
Article @ Mariam Avakova
Photos @ Julia Nedzelskaya,Mariam Avakova, Paata Alaverdashvili
Youth Empowerment for Inclusion – Change Making by Capacity Development 