Together as One
Type of project: Mobility of young people
Countries covered: 🇫🇷 🇬🇪 🇲🇦 🇳🇱 🇪🇸 🇺🇦
Location: Marrakesh, Morocco
Objectives
Our goal through this project is to play our part in driving inclusiveness, tolerance, and acceptance amongst different nationalities, religions, and socio-economic groups. Our focus will be on the minority groups who do not have a voice & we will be instrumental in initiating a ripple effect felt across many countries which cannot be ignored.
” Together As One ” will encourage participants to raise awareness of their own cultures. Our goal is to empower them to respect cultural diversity & foster mutual understanding between people from different countries driving European integration.
Our primary objective for the project is:
• To create a sense of resilience among youngsters through creating a comprehensive sense of belonging and identity
• To cultivate the importance of different values
• To reach common objectives in a universal environment and create common values.
By implementing the venture, we would like to give the participants the chance, especially people with fewer opportunities to:
• Come to Morocco for an enriching cultural experience
• Participants will get a new experience of living apart from home, family, and friends
• Meet others with different backgrounds
• Improve their sense of tolerance
• Share practices and encourage them to be active members of their societies.
Activities
” Together As One ” main project (Main Activity): 36 participants (including 6 group leaders).
Activities will be designed in a way that participants will have role-played processes, through which they realize their response in a specific situation. The best way to learn is to do, it is crucial in embedding the meaning in their minds ultimately driving behavioral changes without them realizing it. In activities, the focus will be on themselves, their environment, working style, reactions, and way of thinking. Workshops will play an important part where they implement what they learned.
During the project, we are going to offer inclusive games, workshops, presentations, study visits so that participants will be able to share practices, identify each other’s uniqueness and respect it.
Our activities will cover the below areas and ensure we reach our participants at the unconscious level where most of our biases are driven. We need to keep in mind that
• What we do every day and how we unconsciously exclude people.
• What is the cost of segregation, non-tolerance, and discrimination and what are the long-term consequences; – How do they produce other problems.
• What we can do to create change in order to make an impact on local communities.
Participants:
The project is going to bring together 36 young people (aged 18-26) from 6 nationalities. To achieve a wide diversity of participants, our team is working together with partner organizations, which will each select 6 participants including their group leader from France, Italy, Netherlands,Georgia, Morocco, and Ukraine. We are going to include young people, volunteers, active citizens integrating them with people of fewer opportunities & backgrounds of cultural differences, social obstacles, educational difficulties, economic obstacles, and geographical obstacles. By using our inclusive methods, we are going to ensure their equal/ proactive participation and ways of learning/ developing skills.
Impact
The issue of social inclusion, exclusion, and integration is not only imperative in the attainment of things such as achieving equal education but also promoting equality and improving societies as a whole. Unless we pay closer attention to the issue of social inclusion/exclusion/integration, some segments of the population will continue to be excluded from progressing. We cannot continue to do our “business-as-usual”. Social inclusion, as an overarching goal can play a critical role in promoting sustainable human development and integration.
We want to play our part in helping establish a just and lasting peace; we want our participants to go home understanding that human beings must respect one other, in all their diversity of beliefs, culture, and language. Differences within and between societies should be neither feared nor repressed but cherished as a precious asset of humanity.
We want to empower our participants to find their own way in life and create success by adopting a proactive attitude and becoming more aware of their potential. We expect participants to become aware of their thoughts and take action beyond thoughts alone.
As a minimum half of the participants are young people who have fewer opportunities, their new experience and the knowledge that they will gain participating in this project will give them the opportunity to:
• change their attitude and behavior
• Improve their self-confidence (they have probably faced the problem of integrating themselves)
We want participants to become more proactive in life and local communities by getting engaged in creating new projects and campaigns for their communities and transfer the knowledge and experience acquired during the exchange to others.
Partner organizations in our project will develop & improve their skills and competencies. Promoters from different parts of Europe, North Africa, Caucasus countries will share best practices and methods – the tools that can be useful for each of us. In the end, we will build strong and sustainable partnerships which promote diversity, tolerance, empowerment, inclusion, participation, and community-minded action from which important steps can be made in driving change. Everyone will be encouraged to participate, and partnerships will be facilitated.
Dissemination
Spain
Seguimos y no paramos!
Location: Malaga, Spain
Audience: Local students and educators interested in the activities of A.M.E.F.E. (Asociación Malagueña de Educación y Formación Europea)
Purpose: Introduce the Together as One project
Deliverable: pdf presentation
Social media link: Instagram
A local event of the Spanish team also took place at the Juan XXIII Cartuja school in Granada. 15 children aged 17-18 have participated. This event consisted of a presentation of the project we did in Marrakesh (information on the topics covered, photos, experiences, etc.) and 4 activities similar to those we did there. Topics such as racism, cultural differences, gender equality and social inclusion have been debated.
Netherlands
On 23 September 2023 the members of NGO Stichting yEUth came together in a meeting with other Dutch people to complete various dissemination tasks and exchange ideas as well as inspire one another. They met in the city of the Leiden, the city in which the organisation is based. In the city’s library they had the stage for a minute of 15/20, in which they presented the projects objectives and activities, as well as the amazing fun times they had in the free time. According to the team, “the people were blown away about the impact the project had on the Dutch team” and got inspired by the activities organized by the Dutch team on the topic of stress-management. Later they all went for a lunch together and talked a lot about future plans.
Ukraine and Hungary
The members of the French team summarised their experiences as follows: “During our Erasmus in Morocco last August, we were deeply immersed in a cultural mosaic, bringing together several countries in a shared experience. The main strength of this program lay in its commitment to social inclusion. Through various activities, we not only gained knowledge but also grew closer, transcending the cultural and social boundaries that might have separated us. Furthermore, this trip to Marrakech provided a glimpse into the country’s rich history and culture, highlighting its invaluable heritage.
One of the highlights of our stay was the cultural evenings, true bridges between the traditions and customs of the participants. These special moments emphasized the importance of cultural exchange, allowing each individual to share and learn in a spirit of openness and mutual respect. In essence, this Erasmus was not just a simple trip but a unique opportunity for personal and collective growth, underlining the importance of integrating such initiatives into our educational journeys for a better global understanding.
The presentation succeeded in sparking the interest of the attendees. In France, such opportunities are not necessarily known to everyone. The concept of social inclusion, a cornerstone of the trip organized in Morocco, was well understood by all.”
