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The Future Now Association
A Bulgarian #youth NGO that works to empower young people, find and create great opportunities for them, and more!
May Newsletter
We’re a little slow to let go of May – a month full of so many events, so many smiles, the ending and the start of projects. But after children’s day, which we celebrated with some much-needed rest, join our team, our participants, and our volunteers, for a quick look back at what happened in the last month of spring!
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About the EUJI Final conference – from Ali
I honestly can't tell how fast time flies! I remember starting this project a lil’ less than 2 years ago having no idea where it would take us! Well, it took TFN team to Bologna, Sofia, Luxembourg, and finally Slovakia. I had the opportunity to represent TFN in the final conference of EU Justice Insight, hosted by the coordinators, Europsky Dialog. The final conference was very successful! Having participants from the law faculty, professors of law and others related to the field! I had finally the chance to speak about statistics and Excel. Turns out Excel isn't everyone's favorite subject.
My key takeaway from the project and conference is how some products we create, that at a first glance you may not understand how useful they are, are quite important and impactful to niche groups of youngsters.
Take a look at all project results over here: https://www.euji.eu/en
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About the FPDT Seminar in Sofia – from Tiana
FPDT for me was a colorful adventure along the timeline. I had the opportunity to touch the different ways in which the beginning of the democratic transition was experienced in different countries (Spain, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria). We had the opportunity to open the door to events that changed the lives of an awful lot of people, to talk about a distant, past period, but still somehow close and familiar to this day. One of the things that struck me is that for different people from different countries the transition has different meanings, different events took place. It was very interesting for me to listen to how others talk about what happened in their countries, to understand how the transition took place there, what actions were taken.
I managed to get a lot from these 3 days. As someone who is still in the school system, I can say that it was certainly very useful and it was very meaningful for me to invest my time to study for a time that I heard a lot about from my parents, but nothing from the school environment. I also took a lot of inspiration for the fact that even if sometimes things seem impossible to change, we can always act and fight, even if with small steps, for the democratic society in which we want to live.
A reel to get the feeling of the seminar in Sofia: here
About the training course Citizensphere – from Ali
I had the opportunity to represent Bulgaria and TFN in a youth worker training hosted by our long-term partners Europsky Dialog. The training was called Citizensphere and it lasted 6 days and hosted one of the most multicultural groups I’ve ever been in. Youth workers from Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Jordan, India and more!
The scope of the project was to equip youth workers with necessary tools and knowledge about global and local active citizenship. I was delighted to also present the project Hey People! as a great practice and project for activism and raising awareness for gender equality!
About the DAY project Kick-off meeting – from Raya
Meeting up with project partners old and new in a project meeting holds a certain magic – it has all the potential of what the future can hold when we unite our efforts and put our best foot forward. That’s exactly what we plan to do with the D.A.Y project – Digital Advocacy for Youth. With partners from Norway, Greece, Slovenia and Cyprus, we are starting up on the road to creating useful educational materials but also opportunities for meeting, learning and co-creating for young people in our countries!
领英推荐
In May, we met up in Athens, we discussed the aims and the goals of the project, exchanged ideas, and got introduced to some new online tools as well! We are excited to have the chance to invite you to join us in this adventure as well!
A quick video look at the meeting: here
About the midpoint of the Youth group – from Emma
In May, youth group DareToCare got halfway through the methodology. We talked about conflicts, emotions, social roles, and many others since all topics are connected, and finding a common starting point feels very meaningful and grounding.
We explored different conflict resolution paths, introduced Georgi and Georgina - the drawings we created to represent changes during puberty, and befriended the gender unicorn. I think that the participants are open-minded and think about the questions in depth. Therefore, every meeting is eventful and the sense of community is gradually rising.
About the HEY PEOPLE Storytelling workshops in Pernik – from Ayo
Raya and I had a blast at this month's HEY PEOPLE! workshop. Huge shoutout to IYC Pernik for hosting the event, the space really made a difference to both youth and youth workers to open up and participate in the activities we had planned. And speaking of THE YOUTH, the group of kids that came to our humble gathering was far more enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the topic than we had anticipated.
The main purpose of our workshop was to discuss the HEY PEOPLE! challenge itself, though some participants were interested in the talks regardless. Raya and I spoke about storyboarding, idea brainstorming and tips on fleshing out the final video. I even did my first ever presentation on the joys of amateur video editing.
Was I stressed throughout the whole presentation? Absolutely! Would I do it again? Probably?! ?
Interested in joining a workshop just like this? We will organize one more, this time in Sofia! Keep an eye out for the announcement!
About our educational games – from Raya
Do you remember our very beloved CETERIS Paribus project? In it, we created an educational game for making your first steps into learning about what economics is all about. (Here is the link to Steam anyway, if you’ve happened to miss it and you’re curious) I’m only mentioning it because the final report of the project was approved by the National Agency of Slovakia, and the project is officially successfully completed. But I mean, I’m also mentioning it because I take any chance I have to remind people we made that and it is still free to access – and it is exactly one year after we published it!
We are now making progress with our educational game on active citizenship and elections, which we are creating in the Agora NextGen project! In June, we will be hosting our partners in Sofia, to review the progress, test the game, and see what we need to do to improve it before we ask for your opinions too!
Excited, curious, interested in any of these topics? Don’t hesitate to drop us a message in any of our social media profiles, or send an email to [email protected] – we’d love to hear from you!
And of course, happy pride month from us at TFN! We can’t wait to host and participate in some really cool activities this month, and we look forward to meeting you along the way!