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A group of 15 AEGEE members, students in Western or Eastern Europe, will spend two weeks in the Caucasus region together with students from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. At the first part of the journey the entire group (Europeans, Armenias and Azeris) will have Tbilisi as a meeting point. We will spend one week in Georgia, and then we will be divided into two groups: one going to Armenia and the other one going to Azerbaijan. Every European participant will visit two countries. There will be a Georgian delegation accompanying both groups. After one week, the European team will reunite in Tbilisi for exchanging experiences, findings and making plans for follow-ups... (II)
Project mission, objectives and goals Mission
The
main mission of the case study trip is to bring youth leaders from
Trans-Caucasus and several European countries together in order to establish
links among befriended youth with a common understanding, who in future would
work to strengthen these links between Caucasian youth and the rest of Europe
through several partnership projects. Due to its itinerant character the project
will involve a large variety of youth initiatives especially in the region. The
aims are: 1. To
introduce the diverse cultures of the region and to build detailed knowledge, to
help form a better understanding of the current situation in that region to the
participants. This will be realised by a lot of thematic preparation done by the
three teams, before the cst. The
specific objectives are: Trans-Caucasus
is a region still unknown to European youth; therefore AEGEE aims at building a
bridge bringing the youth closer to each other. The case study trip will
introduce different European cultures to the participants. According to this aim
the objective is to
raise awareness of young people on:
While being in the Caucasus region, hosted by our partner organisations, the members of the team will serve as “ambassadors” of their own cultures. The added value that we can offer relies on the past projects of AEGEE with similar thematic background, on the every-day multicultural cooperation that AEGEE members experience while organising International projects, and the strong support that AEGEE establishes every year with the European Institutions and other International foundations. In specific, we can offer knowledge from our experience on:
There
will be a total of 17 participants traveling to the Caucasus and the group shall
be made up of 10 Central Eastern European participants and 7 Western European
participants. There, we will co-operate with the
local partner NGOs. (III) List of activities and methodology The list of project activities is centered upon the objectives as set in the previous section (1).
In particular:The introducing the diverse
cultures objective will be met through:
2)
The supporting local civil society
representatives will be met through:
3)
Creating new personal relations and strengthening the co-operation between
guests and hosts will be pursued through:
And
the methodology? The whole exchange is perceived as a mutual learning situation based on participants' experience. Emphasis will be placed on working on the basis of non-formal education, and developing this experience. Active participation, group and team work and learning-by-doing form the methodological foundations of the case-study trip. Non-formal education will provide the framework in which the group itself plays a major role. Participants should actively be involved in their own learning and training process. The methods used during this activity will be diverse: from interactive workshops, presentations and discussions through cultural happenings to traveling together and getting to know each other. A team of experienced students in youth work and non-formal education will guide the process, while the logistics will be provided by the host organisations in each country. (IV)
Background, context and reasons for project
AEGEE's
presence and activities in Central Eastern Europe as well as in South East
Europe in the past ten years have been remarkable. Nobody expected that all
efforts and events that had been organised in or about the former communist and
Balkan countries would turn out to be so productive. AEGEE was able to deliver
the students` perspective on current European problems to these areas that had
been secluded for so long. It offered a channel where young people of
"different sides" had the possibility to meet, to exchange opinions or
merely to get to know each other. One
thing the AEGEE network is very proud of is that it could expand its Eastern
borders a lot sooner than any other International organisation. It was only
natural after a while that AEGEE members started being interested in the
Caucasus region too. Looking at the cultural history
of the Trans-Caucasian countries, the links to Europe are obvious. Still, the
Caucasus remains an area quite unknown, and very seldom visited by tourists or
other than business parties. Neighbouring Turkey and Russia are already fully
participating in AEGEE. Furthermore,
AEGEE offers an ideal platform to discuss Caucasian problems, namely ethnic
conflicts in the mentioned area, bringing together students from the region, so
that the successful work of this association supporting European integration
among young people can be continued. Hopefully, the results will be as good as
those seen in the Balkans. It is our belief that the situation in the Balkans
and in the Caucasus is similar; several different ethnicities living together in
a limited area, after the fall of the communist regime that was artificially
keeping people in peace. The prospects
that AEGEE can bring young people together in order to solve problems also in
the Caucasus are splendid. Last but not least, AEGEE is deeply committed to non-formal education and has been taking part in and forms an organic part of different non-formal education activities and organisations such as UNESCO or the Council of Europe. AEGEE truly believes that the time has come for Caucasian people also to get involved in non-formal education and cross-border co-operation. The case study trip provides an ideal platform for building up the necessary bridges that may lead to long-term cross-border co-operation. (V)
Expected results of project Expected
practical results
The
results will be promoted mainly by the following means: The
WEBPAGE www.aegee.org/caucasus,
linked to the main website of AEGEE-Europe, containing all information about the
project, the concept, information about the partners and sponsors and links to
the different activities; The
results of the case study trip will be incorporated in the RESULT
BOOKLET of the project Youth and Globalisation, which will be printed
(30,000 copies), including the general concept, the experience and the
conclusions after the evaluation of the conferences. It will be distributed
among European Policy-Makers, companies and European students in the cities and
universities where AEGEE is active; It
will also form the integrated part of the CD-ROM,
which will provide all the materials produced for the project Youth and
Globalisation. It will be distributed as well among European policy-makers,
higher education institutions, companies and students; There will be a DOCUMENTARY produced during the case study trip. The idea of this documentary is to present the process of the team building and of the relations evolved between the participants, and the local host students of the three Southern Caucasus republics. It will consist of a selection of events and happenings, that will take place during the trip. The aim is to demonstrate how three weeks of spending time together can create real bridges among people. (VI)
Discussion topics and agenda The
agenda of the case study trip will not be based on the “Me,
Tarzan. You?” principle. This is why both guests and hosts will be
provided with sufficient background information about each other, prior to the
visit. The agenda of the meetings will be drafted on the basis of this
preliminary “acquaintance”. The
list of topical entities envisaged includes (indicative):
Further
topics and the precise agenda are being negotiated and worked out currently. Beside the topics to be discussed, the work of the relevant youth NGOs both in the Caucasian countries and in the European Union will be introduced. We intend to include project management in the lectures and workshops as well as in the framework of lectures and visiting some universities the participants shall have an insight on the higher education system of the host countries. © CST 2003
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