ESC: Youth for Community Empowerment

CANTIERE GIOVANI (CG) is a non confessional, non-governmental, non-profit organisation, which promotes and improves individual skills in young people in the perspective of a wider social change.
A group of educators, cultural mediators and youth workers founded Cantiere Giovani on 2001, in the metropolitan area of Naples, Italy, an area with a very high population density and an epidemic criminal sub-culture.
Cantiere Giovani manages social projects in the frame of non formal education, active citizenship, international, intercultural and intergenerational exchanges, mainly addressed to young people (expecially those who suffer or are at risk of social exclusion) and migrants.

Regular activities are:
Youth Center Il Cantiere: the youth center offers a socio-cultural program on quartely basis. Every three months a committe composed by youthworkers, volunteers, citizens, users of the center decide the theme and contents of the program. Main activities are: language classes, Italian classes for migrants, workshops, art exibitions, theater plays and concerts, excursions, seminars, book presentations, events and parties.

Il Cantiere dei Pirati: afternoon activities for children aged between 5 and 13. The program includes school support, creative and manual workshops (kitchen, gardening, recycle, archeology..), cooperative games, intercultural education, sport, excursions, theme days.

Projects with shools: CG runs projects in several primary and high schools in different surrounding towns, aimed at bringing non formal education methods in highly structured learning environments like schools, to fight school drop out and social exclusion.

Summer camps: every year from june to september CG organizes summer camps for children and teenagers in its youth center, in schools of the area, parks and public spaces. The aim is not to entertain kids but to offer times and spaces where they can experience cooperation, civic engagement and resourcefullness. Many of these summer camps are run in English.

Audiovisual language: thanks to the presence in the staff of media educators and a decennial experience in audiovisual language, CG organizes projects aimed at learning and using the power of audiovisual in telling a story, describing a territory and raising awareness on sensitive topics. These projects are intended to be really low threshold in order to be open to everyone, and focus more on the message to deliver than to the professional skills of participants.

CGioco: namely CGames or CPlay, CGioco is a program composed by events and outdoor activities in public spaces. With games made out of wood and recycled material, CGioco aims at sensitizing kids and adults about susainability in urban spaces through game and fun.

CSL: Cantiere Giovani is founder of the network CSL (Coordination for Local Development) made up of 30 NGOs operating in the area between Naples and Caserta. Within the network CG is active with training, sensitization campaigns, public events & performances, reuse of public properties. These actions are aimed at promoting social cohesion, inclusion and active citizenship in the area.

Svolta Sostenibile: namely "Sustainable Breaktrough", are activities which involves schools and citizens on the topics of urban unsustainability and over-cementification ot the area. Through experential games, provocative public performances and flashmobs, youngsters and adults are engaged in considering in a new way the overcementified area they live in, as well as what they fell as "normal". These activities make people reflect on how a "unsustainable" environment affects our physical and mental well being.

The volunteers will be trained, guided and gradually introduced in all the above mentioned activities and others. Their program of activities is diverse and multidisciplinary, so to match different tastes and attitudes, and make them develop transversal skills and competences.

A crucial aspect is that the project takes place in the province with the highest rate and density of young people in Italy, where the spontaneous aggregation of young people in the street is a typical feature. In such a "social environment", chances to know others, explore cultures and make new experiences occur on daily basis.
We are in a territory full of millennial history and culture, the ancient "Atellae" territory, birhtplace of the Atellan Theatre (a form of Roman Theatre, pioneer of the so called "Comedy of Art"). The area is in a strategic position and well connected with unique places (Naples 15min, Pompeii 30 min, Vesuvio Volcano 45min, Amalfi coast 90 min, Rome 120 min). Still, such a culturally rich area is characterized by strong contraddictions and complex social dynamics. In places like these standard strategies simply don't work, while innovative approaches are a daily occurrance.

In the end, ESC volunteers can live a one-year-experience where they are constantly triggered and inspired, by beauty and complexity.