Prominent support for international youth work: The Minister for Education, Youth, and Sports of the Federal State of Brandenburg Günter Baaske is now the official patron of the ewoca³(+) project partnership with participation from Brandenburg.
Together with two partner organisations from France and Greece the organisation Intercultural Network from Neuruppin/Germany will realise three sustainable workcamps in the coming three years, one in each country. For this reason, the youth work institutions take part in the ewoca³(+) support programme, which is organised by the International Association for Education and Exchange (IBB e.V.). And they will already start on the 16th of July: Then, youths from France and Greece will come to Brandenburg. The participants will live together for two weeks and create an “intercultural path”, a circular path near the Brandenburgian village of Brunne. Their topics will be Nature/Ecology, War/Flight, and Europe. In 2016 and 2017, the youths from Brandenburg will then visit Samothraki/Greece and Sèegrave;egrave;te/France, where they will also realise local workcamp projects together.
In the years 2015 to 2017, nine such ewoca³(+) workcamps will take place, made possible by funding from the Innovation Fund within the Federal Government’s Children and Youth Plan. Youth work institutions from Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia take part. And in parallel, within the framework of the ewoca³ support programme, a total of 36 international youth encounters with participation from youth work institutions from North Rhine-Westphalia will be realised.
“ewoca³ and ewoca³(+) together create a big European network”, says IBB e.V. general manager Elke Wegener. “The official patronage of the Brandenburgian partnership by Minister Baaske is a strong act of recognition for the international youth work performed in these programmes. For us, it is an important step on our way to further develop and make permanent the ewoca³ concept.”