Totally free of charge for the participants, all the costs will be covered by the project.
If you are based in GERMANY and would like to participate in this project, please get in contact as soon as possible through the following emails: gartenlabor@trial-error.org

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WHO ARE WE?! WHAT IS THIS PROJECT ALL ABOUT???

The influx of refugees in Europe, pressuring economic situation, exponential climate change as well as active and participative youth are the issues that we as well as our project partners strive to tackle in our daily work.We believe we are facing a gap between our will to deal with environmental crisis and social inclusion of young migrants (and other marginalized minorities) and the deficit in the existent European capacities on how to effectively do so.
Despite on the generous idea of “welcoming culture” in Germany, we believe there is a general public lack of awareness regarding all the traumatic experience of becoming a refugee, which jeopardises the sense of security; little or no access at all to basic survival resources or social
infrastructures, with an extra challenge of adaptation to a new Country, language, climate, costumes and Culture. All this factors put together, naturally makes it harder for the just arrived young migrants to easily integrate in a new community, not only for them but also for the good
willing support people of hosting communities who most of the times deal with the situation unprepared, missing basic skills such as cultural competencies amongst others.
As Youth Workers with an interest to take action in this situations, we believe there is a need to exchange between colleagues and improve the training quality on youth work with underprivileged youngsters; we aim to develop new approaches which will enable us to work alongside with
overwhelmed official organisations, providing them an extra support for a warmer welcome in hosting countries. To address this objective we propose to explore urban community gardening.
Gardening has proved to successfully address the need of young people for the sense of safeness, belong, purpose and engagement; it delivers valuable insights such as natural laws of cause and effect, therefore increasing sense of responsibility on individual choices and actions. Through urban gardening young people also learn the advantages of choosing cooperation instead of segregation and understand the power of community.

“Concrete jungle” is a symbiosis of these very complex topics, aiming to overcome the lack of specific training amongst youth workers on how to effectively integrate young marginalized minorities; we propose time and space for deep understanding of each concept, designing the
concept of gardening as a method for social integration of young people with fewer opportunities.

OBJECTIVES:

• raise awareness on subjects, create European exchange space and Networking;
• improve youth workers skills especially on social integration and cultural adaptation;
• explore new tools for a more successful social integration of marginalized youth;
• reflect on concepts, techniques, experiences and feedbacks;
• to extract and disseminate the knowledge gathered during the project;
• to ignite political awareness and public proactivity on topics.

THE PROJECT OBJECTIVES WILL BE ACHIEVED TROUGH IMPLEMENTATION OF TWO COMPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES:

1. SEMINAR 13-18 June: 6 days long seminar on theoretical competences and development of a common definition on the proposed concept;
2. TRAINING COURSE 04-12 August: 9 days long training course on techniques and other practical skills on the proposed methodology.

CONTENT:

During the two complementary activities of the project we will explore in depth the concepts of urban gardening, design, natural resources, implementation, community building, cultural identities, privilege, inclusion vs integration, trauma, consensus decision making, conflict
management, ownership, private property, public space, democracy, citizenship, gentrification, maintenance and access to learning; “Concrete Jungle” will host 39 youth workers from diverse backgrounds and cultural contexts which will enrich even further the project, providing them an
open stage for a profound psycho-pedagogy experience on sociocultural diversity and tolerance.

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS:

1. Initiative Mobile Seelengärten aka Soulgarden, Germany www.soulgardenberlin.de,
2. N.E.W Loops, Portugal www.newloops.org
3. Messzelátó Egyesület, Hungary www.messzelato.hu
4. Pajupalatsi, Finland, www.pajua.tumblr.com
5. Soc_Bod, Slovakia, http://vymenniky.sk/
6. HELLASFORUS, Greece, https://www.facebook.com/hellasforus
7. APS LA FENICE, Italy, www.lafeniceaps.weebly.com
8. AEIIC, Jordan, www.aeiic.com
9. MIHI For Training And Development, Egypt, https://www.facebook.com/MIHIYouthO
10. APRA, Albania, https://www.facebook.com/PsychosocialRehabilitationAlbania/
11. Asociación Cultural En Construcción, Spain, www.en-construccion.org
12. Kulturlabor T&E, Berlin, Germany, http://www.trial-error.org/

IMPORTANT

We would like to emphasize, that it will be ensured that “Concrete garden” is free from intolerance, racism, sexism and all other sorts of discrimination. The selection of participants for both seminar and training course - will be motivation level and working experience relevance on the project topics (youth work, youth migration and other disadvantages, garden implementation or in planning phase etc.).
The gender balance will be ensured through application selection; during the project gender related topics will be underlined in order to maintain an inclusive atmosphere of awareness, sensitivity and respect towards all individuals, as we promote the importance of diversity as a
nurturing factor onto collective’s sustainability.
Session will be facilitated with a special trigger awareness in order to create comfortable sharing and learning environment, participants will be suggest to integrate a small daily reflection group as a method to create a safe space open for expression of thoughts, reflections, discomforts or concerns to track and support emotional, mental, physical health and general wellbeing.

*PROGRAM WILL BE HELD IN ENGLISH!

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IF YOU HAVE ANY DOUBTS PLEASE DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN CONTACT VIA EMAIL: gartenlabor@trial-error.org
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