ESC: Youth work at Somos Europa

Our association was born from the concern that the young people of our province (Granada) know more about Europe, its different cultures, languages, ways of understanding life, history ... in the long run we want to reinforce European identity using intercultural knowledge as a tool. We also want our young people to be socially participatory, to be committed to solving the problems that we have had to experience. We want they decide for themselves and become engines of change. We favor the acquisition of skills mainly through non-formal education (holding workshops, developing projects, cultural activities, volunteering ...). One of the main goal of our organization is that young people from more unfavorable backgrounds (for economic, social or geographical reasons, disability or because they are immigrant or refugee) have the opportunity to access educational and cultural resources that are going to allow them to improve their training. An underlying idea in our organization is that we all have potential, we just have to discover it and for this we have to expose ourselves, test and reflect. Our work aims for young people to find their way and for this we put at their disposal activities that will allow them to find it. We work with the informal education methodology, we are convinced that it is the best way to learn, it is done in a more conscious and reflective way. We are an organization that is aware of the importance of multilingualism, opens doors to understanding and knowledge, which is why many of the actions we implement are related to language learning. Diversity is a source of enrichment that we cannot miss, it is another of the bases of our work, we want an inclusive society that leaves no one behind because of their country of origin, their religion, their culture, their economic level, their personal situation, their sexual orientation or gender. We carry out and get involved in activities that seek integration, fight hatred and enrich themselves with difference. We are therefore a very open organization and we are constantly looking for ways to motivate young people to participate in activities that will bring them benefits. We promote entrepreneurship in the broad sense of the word, we want young people to take risks, work for what they want, be sure of themselves, appreciate who they are and where they come from. We implement activities to build their confidence, promote leadership and entrepreneurship. We work at a local, provincial and international level promoting training and cultural activities aimed mainly at young people between 15 and 30 years old. We are a group of people, mostly young people who come from working with “ Padul en Acción” Youth Association and the Padul City Council, we started with these two entities the work with the Erasmus + program with more than satisfactory results and that is why we wanted to give one more step and expand our work to the rest of the province. Our way of working is inclusive and proactive, it is the young participants who carry out and implement the projects always with our coordination and supervision. We easily adapt to the various groups whom we work with, always trying to get the best out of themselves. We play a very important role in social networks, we have almost 28,000 followers on Instagram and about 4,000 on Facebook. We are very active in them, seeking to inspire young people who continue to share experiences of participants in our projects and show information where we are immersed.