Mobilities

The Kick-off Meeting of our project

The aim of this meeting was first to get to know each other. Not all project coordinators had a chance in the past to meet face-to-face with each other. It was our first cooperation in such a consortium. We believe that personal contact is a key to successful cooperation, and because of that organising a stationary offline meeting was essential for such a big and long project. It helped us to understand the way of working of each organisation, our differences, and our resources. Each partner presented their past and ongoing projects and the methodology of their work with young people. It was one of the factors which supported us in assessing risks in the project and finding ways to prevent them.

We also discussed and signed a partnership agreement between our organisations during the meeting. The agreement included rights, duties, responsibilities, deadlines, financial divisions, plan of payments to partners.

Other things which we discussed and specified during the Kick-off Meeting:

the Intellectual Output (webpage youthfolklore.com) – design of the website, content, deadlines for writing articles and posts for the webpage, deadlines for translations
creating the logo for the project
a detailed schedule of the project activities
sharing ideas and good practices regarding the project topic
two short-term joint staff training events which happened in Romania and Poland – we discussed their organisation, educational content, the deadline for buying tickets, and preparation of our participants
risks which might occur during the project implementation. We identified risks and prepared a plan to prevent them from happening.

Training course on creating audiovisual materials, promoting and disseminating of results

In training took part 20 participants (4 participants per country * 5 countries), including 2 experienced in the topic youth trainers from Romania, who held the space during the training.

The main aim of the training course was to equip youth workers/folk instructors working with folklore ensembles/ folk groups with knowledge about the dissemination of results of our educational activities and how to promote our activities/projects/actions.

Objectives of the training:

to provide participants with a theory about the dissemination of results
to give the participants knowledge of what is a result of educational activity
to differentiate between dissemination, promotion and visibility
to equip them with basic skills of writing articles, creating and editing videos, taking good pictures
to provide the space for sharing and exchanging good practices regarding the promotion and dissemination of results

The training was a role model of how to promote our activities and how to disseminate the results of our work. Our youth workers got essential knowledge on promoting our activities and writing articles for the website.

The skills and knowledge received during this training were necessary for us to develop our Intellectual Output, and it improved the quality of the content we published on the webpage.

Training course on the usage of non-formal education methods (NFE) among folklore groups

In training took part 19 participants (3 from Poland and 4 each from Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Romania) including 2 experienced youth trainers from Poland.

The main aim of the training course was to equip youth workers/folk instructors working with folklore ensembles/ folk groups with knowledge about NFE methods in order to use the full potential of their impact on young people with whom they work with.

Objectives of the training:

to provide participants with a theory about NFE
to provide a safe space for participants to speak about challenges in their work with folklore groups
to provide the space for sharing and exchanging experience with folklore music in non formal learning
to develop NFE tools for strengthening competences of youth workers, instructors, educators working in the creative sector in the field of conflict resolution, intercultural learning, project management
to strengthen the development of soft skills such as: creativity, communication, collaboration; their sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, intercultural learning among young people engaged in folklore groups.

The second Transnational Project Meeting („Mid-term Evaluation”)

The meeting focused on monitoring the project implementation. We assessed if our consortium was getting closer to reaching all of the objectives of the projects. We prepared a plan for writing articles and catching up on delays which occurred in the project.

Other things which were discussed:

evaluation of the two short-term joint staff training
monitoring the progress of the project (achieving the foreseen indicators, the impact of the project in our countries, impact on youth)
blended mobility in Hungary – we discussed the organisation, educational content, the deadline for buying tickets, preparation of our participants
evaluation of our partnership and work, which all involved organisations did until the meeting.

Blended mobility of young people “Let’s folk!”

Blended mobility of young people was a chance for all partner organisations to practice the skills and knowledge we received in 2 Short-term joint staff training events. Those competences were tested on a local level in our countries (during the daily-basis activities with youth), but trying them in the international environment was necessary for our project. We checked if the tools we learnt worked the same with people of the same nationality and youth from different countries. Also, we aimed to create content for the webpage: youthfolklore.com (our Intelectual Output). We created videos which are tutorial videos on how to dance our national dances (in total 5 videos of dances) and 5 videos with traditional songs.

The specific objectives of the activity were:

talking about folklore and exchanging experiences in an engaging, interactive way,
promotion of peer education as an invaluable source of knowledge about European folklore,
active promotion of folklore
reflection on commitment, respect, kindness
exchanging traditional dances
testing methods we have learned during the 2 Short-term joint staff training events.