Και φέτος, η ΕΛΙΞ είναι εταίρος του εκπαιδευτικού προγράμματος “Refugees Light [2]” που διοργανώνεται από την γαλλική οργάνωση Concordia με την χρηματοδότηση Erasmus+, στην πόλη Le Mans της Γαλλίας, το διάστημα 14-21 Νοεμβρίου 2021 και αφορά στην εκπαίδευση σε θέματα ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων. Φέτος, η θεματολογία θα εμβαθύνει σε ζητήματα ενσωμάτωσης προσφύγων στις χώρες προέλευσης των συμμετεχόντων και το ρόλο των εθελοντικών οργανώσεων στην ενσωμάτωση αυτή.

Η ΕΛΙΞ αναζητά 4 συμμετέχοντες (18+) που ασχολούνται με θέματα νέων, ή ηγούνται ομάδων ή εθελοντών νέων, ή συμμετέχουν ως ενεργά μέλη σε εθελοντικές οργανώσεις νέων. Το πρόγραμμα είναι διαμορφωμένο για συμμετέχοντες που εργάζονται με νέους και δεν προαπαιτείτε να έχουν εμπειρία με προσφυγικό πληθυσμό. Κάποιοι συμμετέχοντες του προγράμματος ενδεχομένως να ηγηθούν του προγράμματος ανταλλαγής στην Παλαιστίνη, που θα ακολουθήσει, τον Ιανουάριο ή Φεβρουάριο 2022 (ανάλογα με τα υγειονομικά μέτρα και την πολιτική κατάσταση). Θα υπάρχει σχετική ανακοίνωση από την ΕΛΙΞ λίγο αργότερα.

Η Γαλλική οργάνωση Concordia συντονίζει το παρόν πρόγραμμα σε συνεργασία με άλλους 5 εταίρους από Βέλγιο, Ελλάδα, Εσθονία, Ιταλία και Παλαιστίνη.

Αναλυτικά
Dates of the training: from Sunday 14 November 2021 (arrival day) to Monday 21 November 2021 (departure day), 6 days (+2 days of travel)

Organisation: Concordia Normandie-Maine from France

Location: Gué Bernisson, 102 Rue de l’ Esterel, 72100, Le Mans, France

Language: English

BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT
Concordia Normandie-Maine is an organisation working on popular education principles. In the last 7 years, our organisation is collaborating with Palestinian organisations on different projects relative to human rights and human rights education. We hosted several groups of youth and youth workers coming from different cities in Palestine, and we would like now to experiment a great project, in which we will be able to train youth workers to lead a group in Palestine. We want to learn from the experiences lived by the refugees in Palestine.

With our colleagues from Palestine, we would like to raise the awareness on people on the refugee topic in general. We believe that there is a need to speak about the political, economic and social situation of the refugees now in our societies. Raising awareness towards the youth of our different countries, and exchanging on how refugees are perceived by the youth and the population in general, and how youth want to change it.

We also have the need to train our youth organisations to the hosting of a new public in our projects. Concordia for example made the choice to host refugees civic service volunteers in our different delegations. However, we first need to make sure that we are ready for that, and we will be able to support the youth as best as we can.

We work with one refugee camp in Palestine: Dheisheh in Bethlehem, with Laylac organisation. Those refugee camps are made from Palestinian people, who had to leave their homeland because of the Israeli occupation. They fight for the right of return, which means they will keep on fighting for their rights until they can come back home.
In November 2019 a training course was organized on this theme and a youth exchange in Palestine took place in March 2020.

A close collaboration on this theme was born between the project partners and between the participants during the training, which was reinforced during the youth exchange in March.

Concordia's wish is to continue to work with its partners on this theme of refugees and to be able to deepen certain questions that preoccupy us in the work within our organization.

This new project will allow the participants of the first project to deepen the transnational work initiated, and give the possibility to new youth and youth workers to integrate themselves in this partnership work and intercultural exchanges.

During the training in November 2019 in Le Mans, we approached the situation of refugees in the countries of each partner. This training allowed each participant to discover or deepen their knowledge of the social, economic and political situation of refugees in Greece, Italy, France, Belgium and Palestine.

These 6 days brought a lot of exchanges between participants from different backgrounds: social workers, animators, lawyers… refugees or not.

During the evaluation of the project, we noticed that we wanted to deepen certain topics related to the situation of refugees. In order to continue the work of transnational collaboration, and to enable us to develop our professional skills.

In the same spirit as the first project, we would like to invest two different kind of partner organisations: those, like the Palestinian partners, who are situated inside refugee camp, and those who host refugees in their countries and feel a need to invite people to work on the topic. In France, like in more and more countries in Europe, we are facing nationalism and the development of extreme right political parties, racism and discriminations in general towards vulnerable populations.

In this second project, we wish to approach the issue of the inclusion of refugees in our respective societies and the role of our volunteer organisations in this integration.

Themes of the project:

• the refugees' right of return (and possibility depending on the country),
• on government policies towards refugees and the place of our organisations, our role as youth workers,
• how refugees and especially Palestinian refugees (from 50 different villages), have managed to create a collective society in the refugee camps, have developed their education and the education of their children, how they fight for their right of return.

Every year, Guillemette Champ, the regional delegate of Concordia Normandie-Maine is travelling from France to Palestine, in order to meet different organisations in the country, different people and activists, but also to learn how to prepare the youth who we are working with. Sending youth in a country under occupation is not trivial. So, for this project, and especially for the youth exchange, Concordia will support a lot the sending organisations in order to prepare the participants before going. It is also the reason why we first want to train the leaders, through the first training action.

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT
The main objective of this project is to create understanding and awareness of the Youth and the populations in general on the Human Rights and Refugees topic, through training youth workers on the setting of activities on the Refugees situations and gathering young people coming from very diverse backgrounds.

Specific objectives for this Training Course are:

• Developing youth worker’s knowledge, tools and competences in key concepts on Human Rights Education and working with refugees
• Raising awareness of Youth workers on the need of implementing Human Rights Education, focusing of the refugees
• Giving the space for youth workers to exchange on their working context, experiences and challenges on the topic
• Reviewing the evaluation of Human Rights education in Europe, and the present challenges that it faces.

METHODOLOGY
The methodology, based on the reinforcement of non-formal education values, training sessions, workshops, debates, and the structure of this European training will serve to further encourage an active involvement of each participant. This will allow participants to be able to develop competencies and new tools for the strengthening of a gender equality sensitive approach in their organization.

PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS
18+ Youth workers, youth leaders, staff or active members from youth organizations. This training course is shaped for people working with youth who already have, or not, experience with a public of refugees. Some participants from the training will lead the youth exchange in Palestine.

There is a participation fee for participants for the training course: 50€ for each. The implementation of this fee should not prevent any motivate participant to join. We are ready to exchange with the participants individually in case it is needed.

Group size: 24 participants (+4 trainers) from ERASMUS+ PROGRAMME COUNTRIES AND PARTNER COUNTRIES

• Concordia from France
• Laylac from Palestine (Deisheh camp in Bethleem)
• JAVVA from Belgium
• ELIX from Greece
• ESTYES from Estonia
• INFORMA GIOVANI from Italy (Sicily)

HEALTH RECOMMENDATIONS
Despite the global health crisis, CONCORDIA has chosen to maintain its activities, because we believe it is essential to continue to promote our values of solidarity and to maintain the social link which is more essential than ever in this period of confinement and remoteness that we have experienced and are still experiencing. This leads us to adapt the framework of reception for international projects and more generally for all the collective activities that we are led to organise. Their success will depend on the active participation of everyone in all the activities and sessions as well as on the respect of health measures.

We were able to welcome internationals on our projects this summer.

We had to postpone this training twice (November 2020 and January 2021) and we are hopeful that we will be able to organize this training in November 2021 with the presence of our Palestinian friends.

We will not be able to postpone it again but we will adapt its format if necessary, depending on the current situation in Palestine (opening of the borders and possibility for Palestinians to travel to France).

Concerning the sanitary measures that will be put in place on the project, we will keep you informed according to the evolution of the sanitary situation.

We can already tell you that wearing a mask will certainly be compulsory indoors during the grouping and workshop times. This does not prevent us from continuing our work and meeting with partners.

Let's enjoy being together, let's get together despite the difficult context!

LOCATION
Le Mans (143.000 inhabitants) is located in the West of France. It is the administrative centre of the Sarthe department, in the Pays de La Loire region (50 min from Paris).
You will have time to discover the city. Le Mans is a beautiful art and historical city; it is the third one of the Pays de la Loire regions when it comes to culture and tourism. The old city centre is surrounded by Roman walls and the most recent renovation works organized to preserve the oldest parts of Le Mans have helped to enhance its local heritage. Two rivers cross the city which has been named one of France greenest cities. There we can find various parks and gardens, in addition to the two big forests bordering the city.

HOW TO GET THERE?
The closest airports are Nantes or Paris. From here you can take a train to Le Mans.
You can check out the train timetables at http://uk.voyages-sncf.com/en/
How to Get to the Train Station at CDG Terminal 2

Upon arrival at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport Terminal 2 you’ll collect your baggage at the carousels. Estimate a good 30 minutes for this. Nothing out of the ordinary in terms of expediency, perhaps even a little slow. Immediately upon exiting the baggage collection area doors of any CDG Terminal 2 sub-terminal (T2A through T2G), you’ll see the sign below providing directions to CDG Ground Transportation options.

We will pick you up at the train station of LE MANS (North exit), so please do not forget to send us your arrival time as soon as possible.

Don’t buy your travel tickets before your participation has been approved by Concordia.

ACCOMMODATION
The accommodation will be in a Group Accomodation Center, in the city of Le Mans. It is situated not far from our office, a large forest and a lake.
From here, you can reach the city centre in 25 minutes by tram.

You will be in room or dormitory. The number of persons per room will be in accordance with the health protocol. Bed sheets and blankets are provided, but bring your own towel and toiletries.

Breakfast and dinner will be taken in the accommodation place, in a collective restauration centre. The Training sessions and lunch will take place in a training room near the same centre.
There is no website for the accommodation place, but you can have a look at some picture following this link.

DON’T FORGET TO BRING WITH YOU
Your travel proofs: originals or copies of flight invoices, original boarding passes and train/bus tickets (with price clearly shown).

• Your own towels and toiletries (everything needed for shower and your personal items)
• Traditional food, snacks, drinks from your country for the intercultural night
• Leaflets, posters, brochures from your organization
• Information and tools about your organizations work on Human Rights and Human Rights education
• Any personal “talent” you want to share with the group: music instrument, games …
• And for sure please bring with you your smile and inspiration

Bed sheets and blankets will be provided at the accommodation. You are fully responsible for all your belongings.

WEATHER
It will be autumn in France in November. It can often be raining or cloudy, and cold. Temperature will be approximately between 5 and 10°C. You can check the weather forecast one week in advance your departure.

Υπόλοιπα Οικονομικά Στοιχεία
Το κόστος μετακινήσεων επιστρέφεται στους συμμετέχοντες μετά από την ολοκλήρωση του προγράμματος και αφού έχουν καταθέσει τα απαραίτητα χαρτιά (αποδείξεις, εισιτήρια, boarding pass, κλπ…). Σύμφωνα με τους νέους όρους του προγράμματος Erasmus+ και σύμφωνα με την χιλιομετρική απόσταση το ποσό επιστροφής είναι μέχρι 275€(*) για κάθε συμμετέχοντα.
*(It means that if you have a budget of 275€ and you spend 200€, you will receive all 200€, and in this case it will be the 100% of the travel. Otherwise for example, if you spend 300€ with a budget of 275€, we will reimburse you up to 275€.)

Η διαμονή και διατροφή των συμμετεχόντων καλύπτονται πλήρως από το πρόγραμμα.

Το ποσό συμμετοχής για την οργάνωση φιλοξενίας είναι € 50.

Το ποσό συμμετοχής προς την ΕΛΙΞ είναι € 50.

Για να δηλώσετε συμμετοχή συμπληρώστε στα αγγλικά την παρακάτω φόρμα συμμετοχής άμεσα!