Young Citizens in Action for Rural HEritage / Jeunes Citoyens en Action pour le Patrimoine Rural Erasmus Project

Project Title

Young Citizens in Action for Rural HEritage / Jeunes Citoyens en Action pour le Patrimoine Rural

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The project YCARHe (Young Citizens in Action for Rural Heritage) aims to strengthen the mobilization of young Europeans, especially young people in rural areas with fewer opportunities, in the discovery and enhancement of rural heritage. This discovery and development of heritage are still insufficiently used vectors for the development of citizenship and entrepreneurship of young people. In particular, rural youth, especially the most vulnerable among them, tend to reject the cultural elements that bind them to their territory and know little about the value of the heritage that surrounds them.
At the same time, the cultural heritage, tangible or intangible, is a basis for the identity of rural territories and is often threatened with extinction because of lack of transmission and of process of reappropriation adapted to the younger generations. Yet this heritage is a concrete support for the development of an active European citizenship at the same time as a source of jobs for young people with little or no qualifications.
The partners of the YCARHE project wished to develop methods and tools for the educators in charge of non formal education of young people, particularly in rural areas, to support and improve activities based on the discovery and valorization of heritage. The project also aims to encourage the immersion of young Europeans, especially those from rural areas, into non-formal heritage-oriented collective activities that contribute to the development of their citizenship.

The project brought together 6 partners (3 youth organisations -UAC, AMESCI, ACII- and 3 cultural and / or environmental education associations -Udruga Brac, CHI, MKP) in 5 countries (Bg, Cr, Fr, Gr, It ) to respond in a global and interdisciplinary manner to these multiple observations.
In order to reach these objectives, the project has implemented a series of complementary activities:

– Development of a European Quality Reference System (O1) to guide the training and action of youth workers and rural heritage facilitators on the theme of non-formal education in heritage and citizenship. This framework defines pedagogical principles for the action of youth workers and proposes innovative pedagogical methods such as the use of NICTs or the principles of Heritage Interpretation. It also proposes a series of non-formal education activities to be implemented by youth workers around 3 axes of work: Discovering the rural heritage with young people / Understanding and analyzing the heritage with young people / Engaging young people in intercultural group activities for the promotion of heritage.

– This frame of reference was used as a basis for the development of an online resource and training platform (O2) for youth workers. Available in 6 languages ​​and accessible from the project’s website (www.ycarhe.eu), this platform explains in a didactic way the pedagogical principles of the reference system and gives access to 35 examples of illustrated activities, structured according to the 3 axes of intervention of the reference system.

– 4 transnational learning activities were carried out:
• A training of trainers (C1) for youth workers was conducted in September 2016 in Greece. It allowed to present and discuss the axes of the reference system, to test and enrich a first series of activities.
• 3 learning workshops (C2 to C4) for young people from the 5 partner countries, mobilizing 35 young people, 15 of them with fewer opportunities. These workshops had a twofold purpose: to train young Europeans to be active in the promotion of heritage, as future youth organization leaders in their territories, and to test with educators trained during the C1 workshop the key concepts and activities developed in the frame of reference and the resource center.

– An active strategy of dissemination of the results based in particular on the organization of 5 national multiplier events and communication actions implemented by each partner (two specific tools – Facebook and website-, relayed by the communication tools of the partners).
YCARHe directly mobilized 25 youth workers and 35 young people from 5 countries, including 14 in isolation, school dropout or social marginalization.
The training and resource platform is available in 6 languages, free to use. It is currently the subject of information campaigns by the partners in each territory, relaying the information developed during the multiplier events.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 205317,62 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNION ASSOCIATION POUR LA PARTICIPATION ET L’ACTION REGIONALE – CENTREMEDITERRENEEN DE L’ENVIRONNEMENT & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Center for Heritage Interpretation
• Udruga za otocni razvoj Brac
• Association Community integration initiatives
• AMESCI
• Mesogeiako Kentro Perivallontos