Sempre a Frente (Always Forward)

Poland

Learning and Growth through Experiencing

We do believe that learning and growth through experiencing is a human natural need. Through our actions we support youth and adults in personal development and help them to gain key social competences.
We help youth and adults to shape psychosocial abilities, to stimulate constant update of knowledge and to adjust to labor market dynamics.

Using non-formal education philosophy we encourage young people to active social attitude and promote social responsibility, initiative and enterprise. We promote volunteering and non-formal education as a way to get skills desirable by young people. We support youth active participation in social life by including them into the frames of structured dialogue.

We also aim to identify and recognize youth worker profession in Poland.

We work in three subject areas: Personal Development Lab, Non-formal Education Academy and Growth in Mobility.

We are realizing a lot of international projects and local activities. These are our projects:

Building Bridges- Partnership Development is Polish – Belarusian project realized from June 2011 thanks to support from Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Project is directed to residents of Brest Region in Belarus and aims at increasing social consciousness in the field of local activity and non-governmental organizations.

There are several actions taken under the project such as interpersonal and project management skills workshops, study visit in Poland and how to set and run an NGO in Belarus workshop.

Independence vs. Conformity is project realized under 3.1 Action “Youth in Action” Program lead in Georgia in August 2011 in the partnership with Czech Republic and Georgia. We showed differences between seeing independence and conformity in those three nations through art. We organized street show, which showed the problem of dilemma between conformity and independence.

Say „Yes”! It’s a project realized from January 2011 under 5.1 Action „Youth in Action” Program. It’s directed mainly to the young people from grammar and high schools from Lublin Region. Project addresses also representatives of local authorities, politics, decision makers, local NGO’s and all those interested in youth policy and non-formal education. Project aims at strengthening youth participation in social life by including them into youth policy development process. It’s also focus on increasing recognition of non-formal education among youth and youth workers.

Now we develop project “Think different”. The project is realized from September 2011 to August 2012 in cooperation between our Foundation and partners from Greece under “Youth in Action” Program. Main subjects of the project are those civilization problems which reaches young people. Through local meetings, workshops, debates, international seminars, information campaign we spread information about addictions (drug, alcohol, cigarettes), mental disorders, anorexia, bulimia, depression and we present possible ways to avoid it by organizing “Alternative actions workshops”. Local activities of the project are organized by participants themselves and open for all interested including young people touched by mentioned problems, those from different backgrounds and with less opportunities. During cultural night in Lublin we make ‘open stage’ performances during which we present our abilities and talents together with peers from villages around Lublin. Another activity, which we soon organize is Polish – Lithuanian exchange “We To You”. During this time we develop peer to peer education. Our volunteers for 5 days lead workshops in school, where attend youngsters with fewer opportunities. Last but not least, coming very soon project is “Bite the Culture” supported by “Youth in Action” Program. Together with people from Georgia and Portugal we aim to get to know as much as possible about our different cultures through bunch of workshops prepared by our youngsters.