About
RE-ACT IN II builds on findings emerged and lessons learned during the first phase of the project, which is being implemented in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey and aimed at building and strengthening capacities of local organisations to work with young refugees and vulnerable youth by developing innovative and participatory approaches where non formal education (NFE) methodologies are combined with artistic and digital tools.
RE-ACT IN II will focus on exploring new ways of creating spaces capable of welcoming youth without discriminating, becoming incubators of a prosperous social capital. This entails reflection on how to co-construct and create a shared public space that serves as a breeding ground for the development of youth activities. Planning and creating shared spaces, whether physical or virtual, will facilitate community cohesion through bottom-up approaches aimed at including people from the beginning.
The project has been designed with a community-based approach with the direct involvement of grassroot organisations which are already engaged in non-formal education activities with youth and carry out practices of re-appropriation of public spaces for youth.
Objectives
RE-ACT IN aimed and aims to:
- to foster work, actions and participation in shared public spaces for youth organisations in Euro-mediterranean area;
- to promote the establishment of a Euro-mediterranean network of civil society organisations working on public spaceand youth.
- improve the competences of youth workers in promoting social inclusion and building trust and understanding between refugee and host communities through NFE;
- empower youngsters living in marginalised areas, by supporting them to recover from crisis and build happier lives;
- co-design and experiment alternative models of youth participation in public and social life through the means of artistic expression and digital tools;
- enhance cooperation, innovation capacity and internationalisation of CSOs working in the NFE sector.
history
The history of the REACT-IN project can be divided into two main phases:
- a context-based needs analysis focused on assessing the needs and developing innovative NFE methodologies to tackle the issues of social exclusion. This phase brought together civil society organisations and the university of Bologna in a collaboration to produce a theoretical and field research to map the realities of each country and highlight their practices, commonalities and differences using an ethnographic approach.
- a capacity-building phase, focused on engaging and empowering youth workers and marginalised youth by using performing and visual arts as a means of representation. This phase consisted of an initial period of training for trainers and a second period of planning and implementation of activities in each micro context.