DATES: 16th – 23rd April 2014 (8 working days)
Where?: TENUTA SANT’ANTONIO, Via Formello 4, Poggio Mirteto Scalo (RT), ITALY
Participating countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain

6 young people (with and without disability) for each organization + 1 group leader + 1 accompanying person (youth/social worker experienced in this field). We expect to host young people with and without disability, interested to develop the topic of active citizenship using artistic methodologies. Participants have to be very motivated, interested in the youth exchange’ topics and they have to be ready for 8 intensive and stimulating working days. Our proposal is to have heterogeneous group since we believe that is an enriching value in the project to have young people with different life’ experiences. It can provide a wider perspective of the way to live with and without disabilities and it may creates positive synergies to implement new activities.
THEMES:
• Art, non verbal communication and different forms of expression;
• Active Citizenship as a way to promote peer opportunities and new forms of participation on the life of the local communities;

AIM: the aim of the youth exchange is to tackle, from the perspective of young people with and without disability, the topic of disability and to find interactive ways to activate new forms of participation and active citizenship.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:
• to make young people interact and exchange life’ experiences and perspectives;
• to reflect about the different learning styles and skills;
• to provide the young people of new communicative channels to further enhance their skills and to experiment new creative ways of expression;
• to gather young people from different countries to approach the YE topic from a wider and intercultural perspective;
• to debate in depth the topic of disability from different perspectives and backgrounds;
• to approach in depth the active citizenship topic and to set proposals to implement initiatives and local projects that can be implemented on the participants way back home, within their own, local communities;
• to explore the non formal education methodologies that can be used to better implement the work with heterogeneous groups;

METHODOLOGIES: for the entire duration of the process it will be used the interactive methodology promoted by the non formal education, which aims at exchanging experiences and knowledge in an horizontal approach, revealing and promoting the differences. For the entire duration of the project the exchange of technical knowledge will be encouraged and gained following a peer approach, so that participants will share tools and information. This approach aims to ensure a shared approach to the different contents and to empower the participants learning process. Furthermore the combination of non formal education and artistic methods during the exchange will develop the personal capabilities of expression, bringing out the individual skills and creating new, collective communicative channels. In this perspective, these tools will create the proper atmosphere to exchange life experiences, to approach the disability topic and to experiment different shapes of active citizenship.