Restoring history of learning and work “RESTORY”

The project is held under Erasmus+ program of European Commission. It is designed to support
Program Countries’ efforts to efficiently use the potential of Europe’s talent and social assets in a
lifelong learning perspective, linking support to formal, non-formal and informal learning throughout
the education, training and youth fields. The Program also enhances the opportunities for cooperation
and mobility between organizations in Program countries. This investment in knowledge, skills, and
competencies will benefit individuals, institutions, organizations and society as a whole by contributing
to growth and ensuring equity, prosperity and social inclusion in Europe and beyond.

SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT:

The aim of the project was to restore and old cooperage (small private factory) as an environment for learning and development of people with deviant competences and by that, convert the social exclusion where these people appear, into a source of innovations for local development and social life. This learning facility would also be seen as a culture connection center, building a bridge between distant countries through joint efforts of tackling similar social and economic challenges. Seen as a vision for other youngster however, this was even the strongest horizontal priority of the project regarding very own participants, to help them go the path of personal evolvement and growth, see structures and driving forces behind European identity, democracy and decision making.

Our long term aim is to create an example of a learning environment for young people where even youngsters with deviant competences would feel home. We conducted the project in a tight connection with local stakeholders and with focus on questions of culture, learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, gender and history. Our short term aim was to provide a frame for efforts for young motivated people who share our vision and would like to be a part of this process, and to establish an organisational structure that is fit for international competences as much as for local challenges.

The number of long term volunteers that were hosted by Proqvi was 5 persons, 4 from Turkey and 1 from Italy. Due to formal management of the project, we couldn’t send any volunteers abroad; we couldn’t arrange short term activities either.

Our volunteers profiles included interest for history, entrepreneurship, self-expression, social sciences as well as design and handcrafts; both men and women were represented in the group.

The purpose was to create an intellectual core of the project and to give its process sustainability and anchoring in a wider European perspective. We did succeed to reach this objective in meaning that while their presence in the project, with a lot of support from other members of the organisation and constant personal empowerment, volunteers could identify and form both the task, schedules and conditions of the activities that would serve their own learning ambitions as they would develop the core of the learning center for other young people.

Methodology within the project included intellectual and physical challenges done both in the group and individually; group and individual discussion and reflection sessions, workshops, study visits and road trips, research and journalistics, team building and personal empowerment activities. Volunteers got even an active role in preparation and facilitation of other projects that took place in the organisation during the year.

The impact we created with our project was raised effectiveness of youth work in terms of finding links between human potential and its environment, industrial history and culture, and social innovations and entrepreneurship. In a dialogue with volunteers and other member of our organisation through various activities, we raised attention to the matters of social exclusion, measures and methods of approaching different competences. For our participants, members, youth and people in our network we have influenced the discussion of young people’s potential and premises for local/rural development.
Through the activities and reflections we articulated young people’s role in the development of rural areas, different models of empowerment of people in social exclusion through peer collaboration and other methods of non-formal education, and reached recognition of skills and competences that we aim in a longer term repeat in work on a more common basis with other young people, We also aim to spread and adjust European experience to other parts of the world facing similar challenges as even through that little part of the project that we managed to conduct, and partially even thanks to all the challenges we met when we took contact with many colleagues all over Europe, the learnings of the projects became a hot topic in many organisations and environments.
For the volunteers, their competence and knowledge got reinforced by the international perspective and methodology update. Also, the interdisciplinary perspective of the questions of competence and local development, culture and entrepreneurial learning have actualised new views and possibilities for the participants enabling them to organize their own educational initiatives, plan the collaborational projects and measure the results. Two of volunteers got jobs immediately after leaving the project where one of them, in an international humanitarian project.

Here are some more pictures from the project