Moldovan Christian Aid

Within October-November 2016 there were organized round table discussions for the local stakeholders in all 10 parishes from the program "Know-How-You-Do!". The round tables were organized by the priests and were attended by up to 15 participants each – in total 138 participants. Usual participants to the discussions were the mayor, the school principle, teachers, social workers, parents.

The goal of the round tables was to discuss the youth situation in the community and their involvement in the community development. Also, the activities implemented in the “Know-How-You-Do!” project were presented and the possible continuity of the project put in discussion.

At the end of the round table, the participants gained a deeper understanding of the Youth Club they have in the community, of the youth work that the parish is doing and of the potential that youngsters a representing in community development.

In October and November 2016 two CABLE trainings were organized, being actually two parts of a bigger training. The training was organized at the Diocese of Edinet and Briceni and was attended by adult representatives of all 10 parishes that are partners in the project – all together 33 participants – consisting of priests and adult mentors of the Youth Clubs.

The main topic of the training was “CABLE methodology applied in working with youth groups”.

The first part of the training took place on 27 – 28 of October 2016 and lasted 2 days, covering the following subjects:

a) “Zoo” method in building a group – at the beginning the participants were supposed to associate themselves to an animal and to tell the group how does this animal represent oneself. Afterwards, the group was divided in two smaller groups and each group was told to draw a hypothetical zoo based on the animals they are representing and to find a way for them to live in peace.

b) Telling the personal story – every participant was supposed to think of his life and to find the most important moments in it. Afterwards to write a summary of his history so that to be able to tell it in one minute to others. Next, participants were divided by two and told their story to each other, and afterwards in groups by 4. In the end, a series of principles and techniques were discussed, with the whole group, to be applied for a successful storytelling.

c) Exposure – participants were divided in groups by two and sent to the local market place to observe in 1,5 hours a problem that at least a customer encounters at the market, and take a picture of it. After returning to the training room, every participant told about the observed problem and showed the picture to the group. In the second stage of the exercise, the participants were divided in two groups and were told to draw the map of the marketplace with its problems and to describe it to the whole group.

As a homework, every parish had to apply all 3 learned methods with the youngsters in the Youth Clubs and to bring the results at the second part of the training.

The second part of the training took place on 10 – 11 November 2016 and lasted 2 days. The first day was dedicated to the homework and to discussions on how suitable were the methods in working with youngsters from the village. In the end, the group came with a few recommendations to make the methods more efficient in youth work.

The second day was dedicated to learning a new method of developing an action plan to overcome the problems identified during the exposure. It is a participatory method based on the involvement of every group member, following 3 steps: a) firstly every participant is thinking of possible solutions individually; b) participants are discussing the possible solutions in groups up to 4 – 5 members: c) every group is presenting their solutions to the whole team and together are deciding on the best solution.

At the end of the training, parishes received as homework to develop an action plan to solve one of the problems identified by the youngsters in their community during exposure.

All 10 Youth Clubs developed small projects focusing on youth work in their communities, based on a template provided by MCA. The planning process was a participatory one, including the main stakeholders from the community: youngsters, parish, mayoralty, school, parents, social workers etc.

The main topics covered in the projects were related to: leisure time activities for youngsters, trainings, promoting a healthy lifestyle, helping elderly people, promoting volunteering, solving some minor problems of the community etc. Besides planned activities, some procurements were budgeted in every project, for the Youth Club endowment.

All 10 projects were awarded grants in an equal amount and beginning with July 2016, started to implement their activity plans. In most cases, half of the activities are implemented already and everything is going according to proposed plans.

All projects are due to end in December 2016 but have a sustainability plan developed for the next year.

On 7^th of September 2016 a one-day training was organized in case management for the parishes representatives. At the training were present priests from all 10 partner parishes and a social worker, in total 11 participants. The training was held in Edinet, at the Diocese of Edinet and Briceni.

As usual the training combined the theoretical and practical parts. It started with the aspects from the social work system of Moldova, regarding: social work system structure and relevant institutions; case management principles required by the resort ministry; case referral mechanism. In the practice part, participants learned the evaluation and planning tools used in case management and worked on actual cases from their communities using these tools.

At the end of the training, participants had as homework to use the learned tools in case managements within the project, for disadvantaged youngsters.

Based on the information and training received previously in case management, every parish picked up a disadvantaged youngster to be supported, regardless of the fact if he is or not a Youth Club member. Although it was planned to have in case management only one youngster in each community per year, as it was last year a parish could not decide between two stringent cases ant took both of them into assistance.

Every parish started the case management work and is analyzing the case in order to find most suitable ways to solve it. Besides the methodological and logistic support, youngsters are supposed to receive some material support as well, which is planned to be provided in quarter 4 of the project. The material support will be provided so that the whole family will be able to benefit of it, not only the youngster that is assisted. This is done, because in all the cases the economic situation of the families is so bad that youngsters do not have basic utilities in their homes.

In the period between 18 and 29 of July 2016, a series of 10 workshops on using social media for promoting Youth Club’s activities were organized. A one-day workshop was held in every partner community for the Youth Clubs members and adult coordinators, in total counting 124 participants.

Youngsters were thought how to create a page on Facebook to promote their activities, how to use email for business communication and how to create and maintain a blog.

As a result of the workshop, every Youth Club created their pages on Facebook and most of their members opened email accounts. Some of the youngsters tried to create their blogs.

As a tool of motivation to keep their pages updated, a contest was announced between Youth Clubs. The most active Facebook page should be awarded a special prize at the annual forum of the Youth Clubs in December 2016.

As usual, all 10 parishes continued their youth work in the community, organizing events outside the Youth Clubs within the program "Know-How-You Do!". Most of the activities were related to youth participation, while some of them were focused on other age groups and issues. As examples we can mention the following initiatives:

1.Youth Club “Young Dreamers”, Coteala village, Briceni district, organized a meeting with representatives of all local actors to discuss the most pressing problems of the community. In total, there were 37 adults present and the meeting lasted for about 3 hours. In the end, there was drafted a list of 10 stringent issues that are needing a joint effort of the community to be overcome. It was a unique event in the village, to have such a meeting organized by the parish and the Youth Club.

1. Youth Club “All for Change”, Rotunda village, Edinet district, presented a short play on the negative effects of the abusive alcohol consumption. It was presented in the community cultural center within the local festival organized by the mayoralty for the Independence Day. At the event were present representatives of all social layers of the community, counting in total about 70 spectators.
2. Sports activities – every Youth Club organized sports activities in the community. Typical examples of such events will be: football tournaments, volley tournaments, basketball tournaments, “joyful starts”, bike riding etc. All the events were organized outside the clubs and were open for all the youngsters from the community. In some cases, were invited representatives from other Youth Clubs.
3. Trips to historical places – most of the Youth Clubs organized one day trips to the historical places in Moldova. The number of participants in every trip was from 20 to 40 participants and were involving not only Youth Club members, but other local actors and potential new club members. Typical destinations during the trip were: churches and monasteries, Soroca Fort, Old Orhei and other.
4. International day of older persons – on 1^st of October, most of the Youth Clubs congratulated elderly people from their community with this international day. Youngsters made greeting cards and bought flowers for most of the old persons from their village and went from home to home to congratulate them and spend some time together. In every community, there were visited more than 100 persons. These activities had an advocacy element as well, trying to draw community attention to elderly people and their needs.

Altogether, the above mentioned activities had the goal to involve more youngsters in the Youth Club activities and to show their communities that youngsters are a reliable force and resource for community development.

Also, on a permanent basis, parishes are continuing their activities with youngster assisting individual cases and supporting the most vulnerable youth regardless of the fact that they aren’t Youth Club members.

In June, between 13th and 22nd, a summer festival was organized for the Youth Clubs members. It was held at the Monastery of Zabriceni, Edinet district. The summer festival was divided in 3 shifts by 3 days each, with a maximum number of possible participants of 50. Due to the fact that none of the shifts was filled to its maximum capacity, the total number of participants was 118. But, it was ensured that youngsters from all 10 Youth Clubs were present at the summer festival.

The program of the summer festival was structured to offer the participants a mix of activities: trainings, team building activities, free time activities, games and competitions. So, in the mornings there were the training sessions and in the afternoon there were team building activities and games. In the evening there were movie watching sessions.

During the summer festival, youngsters met students from the Association of Orthodox Students from Moldova, which were present as volunteers. So they have exchanged positive experiences of community activities and volunteering. Also, youngsters exchanged information between Youth Clubs and even made new friendships.

At the end of the summer festival, youngsters were willing to stay more, and to continue their interaction with the youth from other clubs. One of the most frequent wishes in the evaluation forms was to have such events organized more often and for longer periods of time.

In the period between 13 and 22 June 2016, within the summer camp for the Youth Clubs members it was organized a module of trainings in volunteer management for youth. In total there were provided 10 days of training for 118 Youth Club members, at least 10 from every community.

The training consisted of theoretical and practical parts, and the main analyzed topics were: what is volunteering and how it is related to the active citizenship; how to motivate the volunteers to keep them active and interested; what is the ideal profile of a volunteer. Also, in the evenings, participants had the opportunity to watch a movie related to the studied topics and to discuss afterwards on the main idea of the movie.

At the end of the training, in the evaluation forms, youngsters stated that they learned how the volunteering helps you to achieve success in life, how the wellbeing of the society depends on everyone and that it is good to have a large social network in “offline”.

In the period between 16 and 27 May 2016, a series of 10 trainings was conducted on the topic of „Youth organization management” for the adult coordinators and mentors of the Youth Clubs. The total number of participants is 152, most of them being adults but there were present youth representatives as well. Generally speaking, in every community it was ensured the participation of the following persons: priest, mayoralty representatives, school representatives, parents’ representatives and youth representatives.

The training lasted one day in every community and combined in it theoretical explanations with the immediate its application in practice. The goal was that after the training every parish will have a draft of a social project for the youth in their community.

The training structure followed the structure of a standard social project, analyzing every section of the proposed template, beginning with the problem identification and finalizing with the budget calculation.

In order to identify the need of support of the Youth Clubs, there was organized a meeting with representatives of all 10 clubs in which were discussed the more stringent needs. At the end, the conclusion was that Youth Clubs are equipped with basic furniture and equipment but are lacking resources to award participants and winners of the competitions and contests organized at the local level. Therefore, the decision was made to by every Youth Club a standardized set of possible awards that will be interesting for youngsters. So, all 10 clubs received a set of electronic/IT devices composed of: power banks, photo camera, headphones, USB flash drives, gamepads etc.