ESC: Enjoy learning outside!

The Domino association from Romania ( non-governmental and not for profit) has been founded in 2004 and has 6 board members and 147 active members (teachers, trainers, volunteers, pedagogical advisers, young students). Our goals include supporting formal, non-formal and informal education of children, youth and adult people in order to acquire the necessary skills and personal development skills for future employment and active citizenship, including promoting of human rights, cultural diversity, equal opportunities and non-discrimination. It organizes accredited courses (by the National Council of Adult Development Training) in 32 fields. The educational related courses: project manager, competence evaluator, human resources inspector, mentor, trainer, quality assurance specialist, teacher trainer, school mediator, vocational counsellor, have attracted a number of approximate 6000 trainees, 1000 of them future trainers of adults. The Domino Association and its trainers have learning, teaching and networking experience in international contexts. All our staff and other 6 active members have participated to several international learning experiences (LLP): Comenius, Grundtvig (Grundtvig workshops included), Transversal program, Pestalozzi, LdV and the majority are teacher trainers about European programs at county level, Youth in Action- TC and YE. They have also been trainers in international courses ( Grundtvig in service course and workshops, YA- TC and YE, POSDRU) with participants from more that 16 countries. Also 2 of our staff members are affiliated to Salto network and 4 of them are trainers for training courses under Erasmus+ framework. In the Youth department, our activities involves promoting volunteering as a personal and professional development activity, sports and recreation games, youth exchanges, debates about non-discrimination, seminars, diversity promotion, workshops, exhibitions, etc. on topics of general and European Community interest, establishing and maintaining ties of friendship and mobilization between youth for knowledge purposes and encouragement for their initiatives; activities in support of cultural diversity, development of activities that promote equality between women and men, respect for religion, to support disadvantaged children and youth (coming from orphanages, school dropouts, delinquent, disabled, Roma, poor socioeconomic status, unemployed, etc.,), activities that promote healthy lifestyles among young people, offering healthy alternatives for negative behaviours spread in our society. Our newest project is a POSDRU (Eu Social Fund) project on entrepreneurial competences for youth (we are preparing 1500 students in this area). We are experienced in working with different target groups and especially, with disadvantaged groups. In the project "You can be the next victim!” we organised several workshops for socially disadvantaged youths whose parents are unable to advise them and their adult caretakers. - We are working with schools and institutions fromurban and especialy from rural areas( Ostroveni, Breasta, Bailesti, Argetoaia, Secu, Malu mare and Podari school, Cosoveni kindergarten ) and we are organising together different events/workshops. - during our first EVS project, we worked in depth with a series of institutions and promoted our activities in such a way that other institutions declared themselves interested in cooperation in future projects (ex: Valea Stanciului school, Ghindeni school etc). Through our volunteers, but also conferences and common events, we met representatives of other associations that implement volunteering projects in Craiova and Bailesti and we exchanges good practies with them and planned common events (ex: ANTER). - We are working with the public libraries in several projects including one through the American Embassy, where we organised activities in the American Corner of the Alexandru and Aristia Aman county library. One big advantage we have is the great support we have from our partnership with Dolj county inspectorate, who monitored some of our projects and was very satisfied by their quality. As such, they facilitate our access to our target groups, give us acces to the MIE network (European Information Multipliers - teachers in all Dolj schools in charge with promoting EU values, European projects and opportunities for young people) and recommend us as trustworthy partners to schools. We also had support in terms of analysis of needs for the young people in rural communities, according to their data, which helped us to make our projects more adapted to the necessities of the target group.