Italian duo promote Europe

AS PART of our EVS in Ballymun we ran a series of activities to promote European Youth Week.

We took the concept of European Youth Week and altered the theme a little to focus on ‘European Union Citizenship Awareness’.

Our main aims were to encourage the Young People of Ballymun to become aware that they belong to a bigger world, that Ireland is a European country, that being part of Europe brings advantages and that there are EU facts and laws that they should be informed of.

We decided to use youth friendly activities that involved arts, soccer matches, computers, workshops, table quizes and promotional bags.

So what happened?

To promote the week, we prepared a large ‘European Youth Week’ banner that we displayed in the main reception area of our building.

The BRYR Youth Workers were emailed with a pack of EU Fact Sheets, a video link about the ‘EU and Young people’ and two sample sessions. 

They were invited to use this pack to run awareness workshops within their own groups.

We ran arts activities that focused on different countries of the EU, encouraging our young people to discover facts about each country, and we also developed a big map of Europe, where the young people had to express what being part of Europe meant to them.

This encouraged discussion on their rights and responsibilities as European Citizens and led to some very interesting conversations.

Where the young people access computers in BRYR, we displayed five different ‘EU fact sheets` on the start-up screens.

Finally, on the last day of European Youth Week, we had an art exhibition and two table quizzes that generated great discussions about Europe and EU facts.

In our main reception area, an exhibition was shown so the young people could see the all the artwork created during the week. 

A very enjoyable gig was also organised where young people from BRYR performed their own original tunes following the successful exhibition of the ‘Irish Youth Music Awards’ that was held in the Aviva Stadium.

And last but not least, we distributed EU promotional bags to the Young people. These bags were packed with EU trinkets provided to us by Europe Direct (many thanks to them for their support), a map of Europe with some facts about the EU and a short statement to remind our young people that are EU citizens and have EU rights!

When the week was over, we reflected on how European Youth Week worked within BRYR and we believe that it could be a recurring programme for future EVS participants coming to BRYR to continue.

We imagine that they could use some of the ideas and materials generated during this year’s event to develop new ones and make European Youth Week even better for BRYR Young People.

We want to add that we found the whole project very meaningful. It was wonderful to see how the young people were interested about where we come from, and why they should go abroad and have new experiences that can help them to grow as individuals and bring their learning back to the community.

This special suburb in Dublin has a deep sense of community and we encouraged the Young people not to lose their roots but to enrich them by getting to know new people and achieving new goals out of the country and ultimately to bring their learning back to get a better Ballymun.

For more information on European Voluntary Service contact volunteering@bryr.ie.

REPORT: Valerio Laneve and Valeria Rizzato