In the beginning of October Seiklejate Vennaskond partcipated in a PBA in Martinique which is the overseas territory of France in the Carribean Sea. During the 8 days of the project 15 representative countries (France, Estonia, Lithuania, Germany, Denmark, Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, UK, Slovakia, Hungary, Spain, Romania and Italy) met to become more familiar with the realities and difficulties young people with fewer opportunities face in these countries and to create new projects in order to fight with these obsticles. We had multible meetings with local organisatsions to learn from their good practices, share ours and to meet new local organisatsions who could be our future partners also. Last two days of the project we were focusing on project developement. All participants put down their thoughts about project ideas and small sub-groups were created for new future projects. Seiklejate Vennaskond was represented in two of these groups and by next year two new projects will hopefully be applied to include more young people into the topic of healty lifestyles and sports and improve the youth work and use of non-formal learning methods in schools and incurage learning in intercultural invironment. Extra to these ideas as a great result of the project we now have multible new contacts from organisatsions all around Europe and also many from Martinique and the surrounding islands to create even more future projects for our youngsters. We feel inspired by all of these meetings and examples of good practices and looking forward to the future cooperations. 

​This summary was made by Kristi Reilent

​Youth exchange in Istanbul Turkey took place 01.04.-09.04.17. Topic of the project was volunteering. Project was developed for youngsters at ages between 16-30 years. Every country sent 7 active and motivated participants. Chosen participants from Estonia were between ages of 16-23. Participating countries were Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Turkey, Hungary and Croatia. Organization Diyarbakır Çevre ve Kalkınma Derneği chose Marnas four star hotel in Bayrampaşa in Istanbul as a accommodation. Sending organization from Estonia is NGO Seiklejate Vennaskond. Reimbursement of travel costs for participants from Estonia is up to 170 euro.

All Estonian participants came to Istanbul 2 days earlier to get to know Istanbul more.
At starting day of project, 01. april, we were accommodated to beautiful rooms and we had some rest. At evening we met participants from other countries and had a dinner with them. This hotel was our home for a week.

About the schedule – breakfast (Swedish type) was from 07.00-10.00. First session was from 10.00 to 11.00, then we had coffee break and after that second session. After the second session we had lunch from 13.30 to 14.30. Fortunately we had free time for after lunch relax and discovering the area. Next session started at 15.30 and at 17.00 we had next break and after that last session. Dinner was at 19.00. After dinner we had time to socialise with others or just to spend time however we wish. At 21.00 we had evening activities such as intercultural nights, Eurovision night and parties up to participants to choose the thematic.

Trainer was good, accepted everybodys needs and participants were very friendly towards each-other.
In this project we got to know other cultures and hopefully we are now more willing to understand and tolerate them. Also we were very motivated and encouraged to participate in other nationalities dances, games and other activities related to their culture. We learned about others cuisine, music and much more.
During the sessions we had various activities. For example a debate about allowing or forbidding abort was really exciting cause some participants were taking it really seriously and you could see that people really cared about the subject.
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We had a great chance to meet local people during the session but also independently during our free time. For example one of our tasks at the beginning of the exchange was to do „mission possible“. We had tasks such a to make a selfie with locals, to ask them about Turkey and to get know the place. Another outside activity to involve locals were „free hugs“ campaign in which we created posters with our national groups and spread some love(and hugs) outside. People reactions were very very different, some of them were very enthusiastic, others not so much. We met people who were positive and open minded who came to hug us, language barrier was not problem, cause smiling is international. Also, we hear a serious lectures from older Turkish ladys, in Turkish. It seemed, like free hugs campaign is really not something they can accept here.
In order to also have some visible outcome, and to promote project more, we also made a brochure, active Facebook page and a video about this spesific project.

​Summary was made by Rahel Tammiste. 

Me, Kairi Kuusemaa, and Heelia Sillamaa from Estonia (Seiklejate Vennaskond) participated in the the following Project „NON FORMAL EDUCATION in Action“, which took place in Romania. The project's main activity was a training course, a mobility of youth workers from partner countries, which was held between 8th and 23th of February 2017 in Slănic Moldova (Romania) with the participation of 30 youth workers from Romania, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Malta, Italy, Greece, Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYR of Macedonia, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
 
Main topics of this Project:

1. Youth (Participation, Youth working, Development and social inclusion opportunities for young people from vulnerable groups or in risk).

 

1. New innovative educational methods and development of training courses for addressing the needs and issues of young people from vulnerable groups or in risk (especially the young refugees, immigrants or hard to reach).

 

1. Inter-cultural dialogue and learning (for the promotion of common fundamental values of our society particularly to the hard to reach young people and facilitation of long live learning of the vulnerable groups).

 
This training was really educational and gave us a lot of practical knowledge and experience about previous topics. Every country had to make a workshop. Me and other Estonian gave a workshop about nonformal, informal and formal learning.

In detaile, we learned how to:

1. write a Project
2. deal with refugee problems
3. work with youth
4. make games
5. plan a trip
6. negotiate
7. give a lesson
8. lead a group
9. manage time
10. socialize

 
Daily program was sometimes too intensive and long (10:00-23:00), but at least our learning outcome were effective. We learnt to deal with long days and studied how to be efficient even after 9 hours workshops.
Especially we learnt about situations with refugees in every country and how they deal with this situation.

Summary was made by Kairi Kuusemaa​