ESC: Long-Term ESC Experience in Patras

InterMediaKT (also referred to as IMKT) is a non-profit organization fostering education, training, and innovation. We keep on track with technological advances to disseminate the knowledge to various stakeholders and target groups. Based in Patras, Greece we are working since 2012 in the fields of education, training, and innovation at the European level. We have implemented several activities, targeting vulnerable social groups, children, young adults, women and the civil society at large. By empowering them and providing the required and necessary skills and competences, we intend to boost their confidence and their employability, but most importantly to foster social inclusion. InterMediaKT’ s work focuses on two main pillars a) the development of digital tools to foster knowledge transfer and b) education, training, and empowerment of our target groups (children, young people, people 65+ and civil society organizations). Up to today, our organization counts more than 50 participations in national and international projects together with many more volunteering activities. We have reached more than 25,000 direct beneficiaries, and our work has been widely recognized at regional, national and EU level. One of our latest achievements, is the 4 stars awarded to our NGO by the THALIS evaluation program, the biggest and most credible evaluation program for NGOs in Greece. All our projects and activities are demonstrated on our website and social media channels, but we chose a sample of our work, on the various levels of empowerment, to be described below: - Youth participation, active citizenship & volunteering: at a local level, we organize educational activities and events. Among others, Open Dialogue Café, which has hosted more than 1000 participants from all over the world. ODC is a weekly event run by volunteers which provides an opportunity for participants to gain knowledge and discuss societal challenges, aiming to promote an open and inclusive society. Over the last three years, we have also organized the event Patras Youth Infoday to inform and empower the young people of the city of Patras to participate in mobility projects. So far, more than 200 young people have been part of this and about 25% of them have participated in at least one program, after their first contact with us. - Empowerment & competence development: at a national level, InterMediaKT is very active in the fields of training and education together with digital skills and online learning. We have organized and offered numerous training courses and seminars across the years. Patras Codecamp, which kicked off in 2016, became the biggest free event of tech education in Western Greece, with the participation of more than 1500 young people so far. We are also the first NGO in Greece to have received the Google Rise Award for the Junior Coding Academy project, while we were one of the few organizations in Europe to win a Google grant for the implementation of Patras Junior CodeCamp. - Social integration & inclusion of vulnerable groups: from a European perspective, at InterMediaKT, we have supported more than 200 young people to participate in educational mobilities (youth exchanges, volunteering projects etc.) across Europe, while we also host international volunteers in Patras. We work with projects that support young people with disabilities and people in the autism spectrum, in their social and professional integration. A few of them have been awarded as best practices. Other projects include combating cyberbullying, gender-based violence and the gender gap at large. (Examples of these can be seen in the projects IVEA, YMI, ON-OFF, My story, RITDHE etc.) At InterMediaKT we are also very active in organizing volunteering activities to benefit the local communities of young people, in cooperation with local actors, like universities, student associations and more. All this information and more can be found on our website https://intermediakt.org/, while there is a dedicated section which young people and youth workers can follow.