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European Camp takes place also for the first time in winter

by Isabel Weininger, Iuliia Skok

Seminar

From the 5th till the 13th of January in Izki, Zakarpattia region takes place European Camp, also for the first time in winter framework. This project is supported by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Office in Ukraine for already 2,5 years and is organized in cooperation with the NGO Congress of ethnic communities of Ukraine.

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The seminar brought together 61 participants from Ukraine and Georgie. These are mainly the teenagers from Ukraine between 12 and 16 years old. The target group of the project is participants from Eastern Ukraine (Mariinka, Krasnohorivka, Sewerodenetsk, and Mariupol) and teenagers from the families of internally displaced people who reside currently in Kyiv, Lviv, and Cherkassy. The Georgian participants came meanwhile from Tbilisi. The positive references about project in summer 2016 and 2017 helped forward to organize the camp this time also in a shorter winter framework. The half of the participants has already participated in the European Camp in summer 2016 and 2017.

Surrounded by wonderful nature of Carpathian Mountains the participants have the possibility in a play form to understand better the basic European values. Each day of one-week program is devoted separate topic that will be taught with the help of different learning methods. This time the main topics are the European culture of the 20th century, media and politics, human rights, and social inclusion.

In a play form and role games participants learn the famous European figures of the 20th century, culture styles etc. During the day of media and politics participants watched and analyzed the Ukrainian, Russian and USA political advertisings and discussed the problems of hybrid war and disinformation.

Afternoons besides the workshops in literature and film clubs, there are also workshops in journalism, theater, Ukrainian history and language. The last day of the project is devoted to the topic of social inclusion of homeless, disabled and drug-addicted people. The interactive project form invites the teenagers to discuss their views on each topic.

The concept of the project European Camp is to some extended unique because it allows the European integration of Ukraine through rising the new generation of European youth in Ukraine. Moreover, the project is oriented on teenagers that because of the hard political and social conditions often do not have such learning opportunities. The head of the NGO Congress of ethnic communities of Ukraine says that the main aim of the project is to activate youth and to do everything possible to maintain this activism after the participant return home. The project coordinator Tetiana Muratkina is sure that the European Camp raises the future “opinion leaders” and in such a way gives them the understanding of importance of their responsibility for themselves and their country. The experience shows that it is true. After taking part on the project the young people get more involved in the school self-governance and become members of different youth NGOs. The participants themselves say that each day of the seminar opened for them the new page of life in EU. They are sure that the project was started in order to establish the European behavior in Ukraine.

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