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Th is project has been funded with support from the European Commission. Th is communication refl ects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information containedtherein.

BOOKLET

TRAINING COURSE

Adventureship

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Training course AdventureShip for youth workers looking for challenging learning experience and new working

methods was organized from 8.4. to 17.4. 2011 in Macedonia by Volunteers Centre Skopje. The training course provided partici-pants coming from more 20 countries (Sweeden, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Lithu-ania, Latvia, Armenia, Ukraina, Azerbai-jan, Turkey, Greece, Albania, Italy and...) chance to experience approach called adventure education.

Adventure edcuation focuses on partici-pating in activities with perceived risks and includes cooperative games, trust-building activities, problem solving ini-tiatives, and wilderness expeditions as a part of an educational pursuit. Adventure training allows reexamining preconcep-tions and test limitations and abilities of individuals and teams.

Main aim of the project was to provide

extraordinary learning pro-cess, which would promote professional and personal development of youth work-ers and give knowledge about adven-ture education and implementing its principles in the activities with aims of social inclusion and combating youth unemployment.

Objectives of the training course:

to learn about creating and elaborating adventure training initiatives.

To elaborate new learning tools and ap-proaches that implies participation in adventurous activities and development of transferable skills and attitudes that can be applied in professional work.

To developing participants’ civic skills such as communication skills, team building skills, planning skills, creative thinking and encouraging the partici-pants to take more active role in address-ing problems actual to young people in their communities.

To reflect on issues linked to sense of belonging to Europe and European citi-zenship.

To explore links among cultural diver-sity, creativity, innovations and efficient leadership.

To intensify personal contacts and or-ganizational cooperation among Neigh-boring partner countries from South East Europe, Eastern Europe and Caucasus and Programme countries.

To facilitate elaboration of new Euro-pean cooperation projects among the promoters that would address the youth unemployment issue.

By this brochure we would like to share some of the moments of the training course as some of the project activities. Also we would like to use this opportunity to thank you all partners and participants for their support and active participation.

Regards to all of you, Volunteers Centre Skopje

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Adventure is ...

It´s…challenge. Life. Emotion. Courage.

Inspiration. It´s something new and bring changes. It´s a trip, in all your

senses. Your body, your mind, your ability to evolution, your trust and truth with yourself,

the others and the circumstances. Life is an adventure. I’m suspect, but when i think

in adventure, i think in nature. Because in the civili-zation, all are prepare to us, every facilities, every

ways, every informations, everything… But in the nature, anything are prepare to us, we have

to are prepare. Prepared to live something new, something unexpect, and couriously,

something simple, and natural, like our realy nature.

Adventure is our nature.

Ad-venture is trying

to reach something to get for a stuff what u really insist

on or what u really want. When u are trying to reach it,u are

also going into a circle which is making u feel hard.

Un-known, which sur-

prises, full of energy, inspiring, unique. It could be a lesson or lifestyle.

For me adventure is

a great and colorful event with happy ending, adventure

is when you can not be 100% sure about what will happen next so eve-rything depends on quick choices

you make, adventure is getting fulfilled with a lot of new

experience.

Eve-rything from

calm walking in the woods to adrenaline-filled kiteboarding on

the ocean.

answers from application

forms of the participants which they were filling before

coming to Macedonia

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and what is adventure for you?

write it down

and

go for it 3

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adventure is looking for way in unknown city and solving tasks with other “strangers”

At second day of the project the participants took part in challenge during which they needed to find several stops all around Skopje for them unknow city. At each stop were waiting for the participants local and EVS volunteers with several tasks - to take bling walk, to draw the view, to solve logical tasks that you can also try be-low....right answers you can find at last page. And also put together puzzle tha was made from this postcard of Skopje that is showing old Skopje before earthquake.

I have a tail,

and I have a head, but i have no body. I am NOT a snake.

What am I?

I never was,

am always to be,No one ever saw me,

nor ever will. And yet I am the confidence of all. To live and breathe on this

terrestrial ball.What am I?

If you put a coin

in an empty bottle and insert a cork into

the neck of the bottle, how could you remove the coin without taking the cork

out or breaking the bottle?

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adventure is facing prejudices and stereotypes inside us

During the project the participants took part in several intercultural learning ex-ercises. Some of the were also focused on prejudices and steryotypes. You can find one of these exercises on this page.

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A single mother with a 3 year old child whose father is Tunisian. He visits his son occasionally and sometimes bring along a few friends.A migrant workers family from one of the Balkan countries with 4 children be-tween 5 and 18. Father works in steel industry, mother would like also find a job, but currently is unemployed. A family with a 17 year old daughter attending 11th grade at a secondary school. Father is an accountant in a bank, mother is a teacher.A single 70 year old lady living on minimal retirement paymentA group of Polish workers, all working in the kitchen of a large restaurant.A group of 4 young people living an alternative life-style rejecting the materialis-tic ideology of consumption.A Roma family of 5 persons. Father works occasionally and is unemployed in between times. They are a part of a larger family which has strong ties and likes to hold festivities.An American couple without children. Husband is working at the International Atomic Energy Authority, wife is taking care of the household and 3 dogs.Two artists, approx. 40 years old who live rather a bohemian and unconventional lifestyle and have many artist friends.A girl studying piano and singing at the conservatorium, who has to practise regularly in the afternoons.A political immigrant from Africa with his Austrian girlfriend. He is trying to get work permit as an engineer.A religious Muslim family which lives strictly according to the Koran, the mother leaving the house only veiled.A gay men who’s single, but invites a lot of man during the week in his apartment.A young men, he’s wheelchair user and live with his 76 years old mother.

You were living in nice house. One day you just lost your job and now you can-not offer live alone anymore, so you decided to split the house in 4 flats,

Can you please explain why did you choose these neighbours? Any prejudices and stereotypes be-hind your choice? And if yes, which one? Can you please list them and as last step please just take a moment and let’s thing how these prejudices and

one of flats is your. And you are looking for neighbours. The question is with whom would you like to live? Please, find yourself three neighbours.

WHY?

stereotypes were created - are they based on your life experiences or on story of somebody else or because you read something in newspapers, watching something in TV?Prejudices and stereotypes are around us and the most important thing is to be aware of them.

adventure is working in team even if you are not team player

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Building a team, trust and cooperation in a team, phases of group building as roles in a team were topics of several sessions that gave the participants a chance to identify his/her position in a team and to improve team work skills. Example of several short tasks from the sessions about team please find above.

Write a LOVE post-card to an imaginative [or real] stranger! Ad-ditionally write some short love words on the postcard in 7 differ-ent languages, which means the same! You can ask help from other participants

AN INTERVIEW – ABOUT THE FIRST TIME SEEN OR DONE ACTIVITY!Choose one person from your team, who will be the inventor/discoverer of some-thing what was never done, seen or experi-enced in the world be-fore! Send him out of the room and together with the rest of the teams – decide, what is that thing the “Inven-tor” did/experienced? Choose another team member who will be interviewing the “In-ventor”!Call back the “Inven-

DANCE CLASS! As your team is repre-senting diversity of dif-ferent cultures, please perform a national dance [at least part

and you and team? Let’s try. Write down how you see yourself in a team - are you team player or a leader, are you brining new ideas or taking care about details, are finisher

or full of creative ideas...

When work in team I am ...........

tor” and start the inter-view! The person, who is interviewing the per-son, can’t use any direct words – connected to the activity. He must ask questions to the “Inven-tor” – until the “Inven-tor” guesses right, what he have done. The “In-ventor” – should make like a story – of his ad-venture, even though he doesn’t know what he/she did.

of it] from one of your team member’s culture. And teach some dance steps to the rest of the participants. If there’s a Macedonian in your team, you can’t perform a Macedonian dance as the main dance, but it can be additional to your performance.

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adventure is hiking, carring others when lying down in park

job needs a lot of patience. The administration is slow, the results are unsatisfying. People have lost trust in governmental institutions. You ink it is neces-sary to invest much time talking to people on the street or over a coffee to overcome this. You feel easily offended when somebody criticizes you. You are giving your best in your job, and it really hurts you when people

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Role plays and

simulations were part of this training course as well. The

main aim of these activities was to provide the participants a chance to become somebody else...to get

new identity, to increase ability of EMPATHY.

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mind. You are very talkative, you frequently interrupt others in the middle of the sentence, but you don’t mind when others interrupt you. You were just brainstorming, so what? What you cannot stand is when somebody is bossy towards you, es-pecially when they tell you what to do although they don’t know it bet-ter than you. Others will catch your attention when they make jokes and when they make you feel recognized as equal.

Chris, 23.

You work in an advertising agen-cy. You are a very humorous and easy-going person. Aday with-out a good laugh is a lost day for you. You don’t take yourself too seriously, and you like to break up formal settings with a spicy comment. You are playful, crea-tive, come up with new ideas all the time and you just say im-mediately what comes to your

During one role play each participant receive new identity - new passport and were ask to put himself/herself to new roles. Below you can find several roles and tyou can-ry to become somebody else. Do not forget also to think about non-verbal communi-cation, voice and all the details that make others believe that you are somebody else.

Liz, 35.

You are a single mom, with 2 chil-dren, and you work as a history teacher at the local school. In your vacation time, you organize archae-ology camps for children where they can explore history with their own hands. You take your kids with you when you go on these camps. You enjoy working with very differ-ent people, with your colleagues at school as well as with the teamers in your free time.

It is important for you to put your actions into the bigger picture . You hate it when the school director tells you what you should do without explaining why. When somebody wants you to go for something, he needs to give you enough background information to make you understand the sense of your commitment. You don’t give much on ap-pearance, such as dressing up and wearing make-up. How could you, with 2 kids and a full time job? However, you feel uncomfort-able when something seems to disturb others – you question yourself if you are not appro-priately dressed or behave inadequately. You avoid any contact with people who might have this image of you.

Pearl, 25

You are a police officer, mean-ing that you are fighting with a huge amount of trouble in a country, where warlords and foreign troops control the daily life. Being one of the very few female officers on your team, you are responsible for crimes that have been committed towards women. You have learnt that your

make you responsible for the ineffectiveness of your country’s administration or for wide-spread corruption. Having a chat and going for a coffee with people is WORK for you, not laziness!!! The most important thing for you is personal relations. You have lost your sister during the civil war, and you are deeply thankful for every person who shares your life. You seek to establish good relationships, including physical proximity and eye contact.

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adventure is meeting somebody from other cul-ture

Training course Adventureship connected participants coming from more than 20 countries. Mostly all countries were represented just by one participant. All training course included several activities during which the participants had an opportunity to discver and learn something new about other cultures.

but how much we really know about other countries, cultures? Let’s try one exercise. Imagine that you are getting ready for trip to Czech Republic

and please list below at least 15 characteristics but now geographical data, let’s focus on society.

So how many children has Czech family? When young people are living family house?

Are they getting married or there is no need for this step? What role plays religion in society?

Is it easy? Just pick up other country and try again.Let’s get ready for the summer trips.

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adventure is solving conflict without hurting somebody During the training course we used also diffferent methods of brainstorming as starting point for discussions. So let’s try to in case of conflict.

Please list below at least 10 associations.CONFLICT IS....

Please list below at least 10 associations.CONFLICT IS NOT ...

WE NEED CONFLICTS BECAUSE ...

WE DO NOT NEED CONFLICTS BECAUSE THERE IS ALWAYS OTHER WAY...

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adventure is providing feedback yourself and others

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Feedback activities were organized on regular base during the training course. The participants had opportunity to provide feedback in daily reflection groups as after implemented activities in open discussion. The final evaluation of the training course had several steps, one of these steps was also final questionnaire. Below you can find several short notes from the final evaluation forms as messages from the participants.

...work-ing in a team.

usually I work alone but now I understand

tthat it is more easy work together (easy and pro-ductive). It tis important for my study/work cause

I will work in a team. (Francesca Bianchi,

Italy)

the most useful

thing was to work with team because all

of use are different, but it was excellent!!!

(XX)

I learned to

deal with people from different backgrounds,

cultures and charecteristics. Also I imrpoved my team work

skills. Studied to accept different opinions and compromise some-

times. (Miranda Tskhadadze, Georgia)

How was the

training course? It was educational

but also fun, interesting organised and with one

word...Adventurous. (Sasho Chadamov,

Macedonia)

...per-sonal emotions,

connections,pfff, im-possible to describe, im-

possible to have perception now. I think just when I arrive at

home I will feel it!!! (XX)

Now I know the

different roles of the people in a project. If the

work is divided good the re-sult will be fantastic. This mix of culture is amazing. I never was in a training course with a lot nacionalities. It is very in-teresting observe the difer-

ence. Jose Maria Gomez Arios (Spain)

Can we try it

again! Erald Gega (Albania)

I learned lot¨s

of activities that can be used within my work. I liked simulations, ener-gizers. Also hiking I have never done it before now

I love it. XX

“You guys almost

became my an-other family and First

time I have learntto live without any

complain because of my sexual orientation whenpeople do know about

me “Umut Dere

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adventure is to try again We hope that this training course motivate the partcipants to continue to take part in different activities organised under Youth in Action Programme. Below, please find sev-eral links that can help to find create sesion, to take part in training course or youth exchange, to go as EVS.

to find idea for session, to find a partner for project, to find a training abroad

http://www.salto-youth.net/

to start with Youth in Action Programme http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/youth/index_en.php

to find EVS project http://ec.europa.eu/youth/evs/aod/hei_en.cfm

to get to know more about creativity http://www.jpb.com/creative/index.php

looking for grant opportunities http://www.eyf.coe.int/fej/

to know more abotu European Year of Volunteering http://europa.eu/volunteering/

to get to more data and information about youth in Europe

http://europa.eu/rapid/

Volunteers Centre Skopje ttp://www.vcs.org.mk/

to again come to Macedonia

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commis-sion cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the infor-mation contained therein.

VOLUNTEERS CENTRE SKOPJE WISHES YOU A LOT NEW ADVENTURES.

cointomorrow