On the last week of September I discovered what is intergenerational work and work with the community.

I traveled almost 30 hours by train to Kavadarci, a small town in the south of Macedonia, where the training course "Young people are part of the community too!" took place. The TC was organised by the Youth Association Creactive together with ENOA (European Network of Animation) and funded by the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe.

We were 22 participants from all over Europe and many local ones from Kavadarci. Lead by our three trainers Solene, Nik and Dragan, we discovered the concept of action training. An action training is a training that includes not only structured thematic workshops lead by trainers, but also an action carried out by the participants, usually in the local community and with long term perspective. We also exchanged experiences on working with young people within the intergenerational context, we analyzed the process of active youth participation and the role of the youth actor in the community and we developed and implemented methodologies for working with young people in intergenerational activities.

The participants from Kavadarci presented us the current situation in their town and the issues which they consider a priority in their community. We focused on some of those issues, did some social research using the tools and methods we learnt previously in the TC and we organised some events based on that research. The events, which consisted of some meetings with local policy makers and youth NGOs, activities and workshops with children and games with children from Roma community, aimed to plant the seeds for future work of young people from Kavadarci together with the community.

Mercedes (EVS volunteer)