The youth exchange will take place near Murska Sobota in a settlement called  Rakičan (5 min from Murska Sobota), Slovenia.

 

The project seeks to make young people more aware of the meaning of minorities as well as the word itself, because it is often falsely interpreted. We wish to banish stereotypes that are steered towards certain minorities and contribute to greater tolerance towards each other. The project seeks to continue to develop a string of cultural crashes and highlight the issue in an international environment. Simultaneously, we wish to contribute to other organisations deciding to prepare similar projects with the same name – "Take a step against discrimination«.

 

Goals of our project: familiarize ourselves with minorities that live in the area of partnering countries, the culture, habits and traditions of partnering countries, familiarize ourselves with the diverse culture through practical examples, develop young participants' personal competences, get to know minorities in the region of Pomurje and Slovenia through practical examples, get to know life near the border and the cultures that inhabit the same space, get to know the Roma and LGBTQ community in Slovenia, make young people more aware of the importance of diversity, encourage young Europeans to participate in similar projects through social media, spread tolerance among young people towards different minorities, include young people with lesser opportunities, get to know the field of human rights, improve team work skills, network organisations and strengthen the partnership.

 

What activities do you plan to implement? What is the number and profile of the participants involved?

 

     We will implement two Youth Exchanges, a youth exchange with the title "Take a step against discrimination", where we will get to know minorities and tolerance towards one another and a youth exchange "Take a step against discrimination: next level!", which will be a continuation of the first part of the activity. The project includes 72 young participants from Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania, Poland and Hungary.

Participants of the youth exchange are aged from 16 to 30, among them are participants with fewer opportunities and youth leaders that are over 30 years old. Some participants have been a part of the Erasmus+ projects in the past, while most are encountering these projects for the first time – our aim is to promote the Erasmus+ programme among young people that are not familiar with the programme. Emphasis is placed on including young people with fewer opportunities and young people that come from weaker economic backgrounds or geographically remote areas, e. g. peri-urban areas where accessibility to programmes for young people is limited.

 

What results and impact do you expect your project to have?

The project aims to promote European cooperation in the field of youth, active citizenship of young people in general and European citizenship, as well as mutual understanding of young people from different countries and contributes to the development of quality support systems for youth activities.

           At the local level, all young participants will certainly leave a footprint in the interaction with people in the local environment. People will probably become more open to foreign guests and become more hospitable, while the remaining young people who are not participants in youth exchange will get to know the Erasmus + program and may be motivated to participate in youth exchange projects. At the same time, we want to enthuse young participants to reintegrate into youth exchange projects as well as for active inclusion and participation in society in other forms.              The aim is also to encourage organizations in the local, regional, national environment and, last but not least, at international level, to organize various projects for young people and to attract them to participate and participate actively. Through activities we will learn new people with different national, cultural backgrounds and learn how to accept the difference. At the same time, we will surely learn something new about other countries and cultures, especially through presentations of individual countries and cultural and culinary evenings. We will connect each other, get to know each other more closely, as part of the team work, we will strengthen our teamwork competencies and the importance of adapting to the group

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Hosting organization

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The participants will have to help with the dissemination after they get back home. So, each group will make a plan during the exchange about what kind of dissemination they will prepare.
The Location of the project will be a settlement called Rakičan, where our accommodation is also located. Our accommodation will be Mansion Rakičan (Dvorec Rakičan). You can find more info regarding the accommodation in the infopack (The address is: Lendavska ulica 28, Rakičan, 9000 Murska Sobota, Slovenia). We will be located 5 min from Murska Sobota, which is the capital of the region.

- Vaccination of participants. We would kindly ask if participants are fully vaccinated to avoid any problems for returning back to their countries. To enter Slovenia participants will have to follow the rule of "PC", which means that each person that wants to enter Slovenia needs to show a certification of vaccination or certification of recovery that is not older than 6 months. Participants that will travel to Slovenia by plane, will have to fill out the travel locator form. Our government added this rule in August 2021, so we will send you the link to the form later if they will still oblige.

Every day we will measure fever for each of the participants, during our visits we will wear masks and we will have access to disinfection all the time. For going back, we will organize a group testing of participants if they will need it.Single test (antigen test) is 7,00 € per person. In Slovenia for now you need to follow PCT rules in almost every daily situation (going to the bus, going to the train, going to the shop, to the restaurant etc.).