Between 15th – 22nd August Scout Association of Macedonia in partnership with Center for intercultural dialogue and Center for research and analysis NOVUS organized a training camp academy for high school students for volunteerism and activism “Youth Changemakers Academy” in Scout Center, Ohrid.
88 high school students from all over the country took part in the training camp. The programme included various educational packages, covering the topics of volunteerism, leadership, non-formal education, youth activism, youth participation, advocacy, human rights, media and digital literacy, interculturalism, soft skills and many more. The participants had the opportunity to choose between these packages, creating their own educational path. The programme was facilitated by young activists who transferred their knowledge and experience to the participants in an interesting and unique way. The training camp was implemented outdoors, through a methodology that involved education in nature, working in accordance to the scouting principles and values, which contributed to motivating the individuals to reach their full potential. The accommodation was in tents, making this training camp more amusing and challenging for the participants.
The training camp was visited by a representative of the Delegation of the European Union in North Macedonia – Luca Citarella who is a program manager and also coordinator of the European Year of Youth 2022 in North Macedonia, and Mariana Angelova – Secretary
General of the National Youth Council of Macedonia. They were guests on the stakeholders panel that was organized in the framework of the training camp, and they talked about different opportunities for youth in our country, implementation of the Law on youth participation and youth policies and different challenges that the youth is facing nowadays. The participants were genuinely engaged in the discussion and had a lot of questions for the guests.
On the last day of the training camp the participants were asked to divide themselves into groups of 4-5 people and write their own projects addressing some issues in their community. The ideas that came from the groups were delightful and refreshing. The participants of the academy will have the opportunity in the coming period to get involved in local informal networks of “agents of change” and together with their peers to be real bearers of positive changes through organizing and implementing micro and small projects co-financed by the European Union.
More pictures from the training camp can be found here.
The training camp was part of the project “Youth Agents of Change”, financed by the European Union.
