“InFormAzione: To be part, take part”

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Cinisello Balsamo Municipality

Organisation:

Cinisello Balsamo Municipality

Country:

Italy

About organisation:

The City of Cinisello Balsamo is located in the North of Milan. Youth is 20% of the population (75.659 inhabitants). The Municipality offers to the youth some services such as the European Projects Department and, since 2016, the Eurodesk. The European Projects Department was born from the administration’s desire to boost the participation of the institution in European, National and Regional programs for the development and growth of the territory. It promotes the non-formal education approach to:- develop the key competences for lifelong learning;- raise youth active citizenship;Its projects include internships, transnational experiences (Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps); sense of initiative and entrepreneurship development; Civil Service; training for youth workers).The main goal is to reach and inform more youth as possible, about the opportunities to develope the personal skills thanks to the experiences at local level and abroad.

Title of the project

“InFormAzione: To be part, take part”

Start date:

31/10/2021

End date:

31/10/2022

Objectives:

The project “Informazione: To be part, take part!” was born from a regional call. This was to create new projects in order to increase the active participation of young people. According to this, the project “Informazione: to be part, take part” had two main actions: The first one was the opening of three new Eurodesk Local Points located in different Municipalities in the North of Milan, in order to improve and extend the services offered by Eurodesk. This gave birth to the “North Milan Eurodeks Network”. The main goal was the promotion of European mobility opportunities abroad for training/work/volunteering experiences and youth exchanges. All these experiences are really important for the development of soft and hard skills in youth. The second action of the project involved directly young people and made them protagonists. This consisted in a Call to Action for youth living in the north of Milan. We made an open call to every youth between the age of 18 and 30, asking them to present us their project idea with a social impact in the territory. The 4 most innovative ideas were selected, and the youth who won had the possibility to follow training courses with youth workers, mentors, professionals in order to develop their ideas and realize them successfully. One project was applied to the European Solidarity Corps call and received a grant. A second project has been finalized and will be applied to the same program in February 2023.

Why the project was: empowering young people, adapting to changing realities, or thinking out of the box:

This project belongs to the category of "empowering young people" as it was a project designed to make the youth more conscious about their skills and opportunities. The first action of the project aimed to empower the awareness of European opportunities addressed to youth.The creation of the “North-Milan Eurodesk Network” is a big chance for young people to take advantage of new services, information and orientation towards European opportunities, and this allows them to be able to decide their future and to choose the experiences to grow and develop their soft and hard skills. In the second part of the project, we made an open call for young people in order to help them to realise their ideas. The responses to the call involved local youth from different backgrounds, some with language difficulties, others with a lack of project management skills. Some of them had the opportunity to follow a training course, led by a youth worker that, through an informal education method, helped them to implement and realise their ideas. The courses gave them tools to develop their skills and professional help to realise their project ideas.We created this project to give everyone the possibility to develop their idea. In fact, the training course was free and we also offered support to youth who decided to apply in European Call.This was an important opportunity for young people with good ideas but without competences to develop them.

How the project was inclusive:

Thanks to “Informazione: to be part, take part", the visibility of Eurodesk in the North Milan area has grown considerably, in fact one of the action on the project consisted in the opening of three new Eurodesk points, giving life to the “Northern Milan Eurodesk Network”. Before the project, in the north of Milan there was just one Eurodesk point, in Cinisello Balsamo. Now the network includes the Eurodesk points of: Cinisello Balsamo, Cusano Milanino, Cormano and Bresso. All of them are inside the municipalities. From now on more people in our territory know what Eurodesk is and what it does. This also thanks to our advertising campaign inside the Cormano-Cusano Milanino railway station for the two most important months (May and September) which is visited by hundreds of people everyday.

Green aspect:

Environmental change is one of the most important themes for our office. In fact, we try to do our best for the environment for every action or activity we implement. For this project we mainly use online communication such as social media, website, radio conferences.For our advertisement campaign we also print some material, taking care of the numbers of the paper we used printing just the necessary materials. As soon as the project ended we tried to give a second life to all the stuff that we are not using anymore for the project. Furthermore, the gadgets that we spread during the events have been designed to be environmentally friendly: a water bottle to reduce the waste of plastic and a tote bag made from recycled cotton.

How the project has given a European dimension to your event and ensured the visibility and promotion of Eurodesk?

Thanks to “Informazione: to be part, take part", the visibility of Eurodesk in the North Milan area has grown considerably, in fact one of the action on the project consisted in the opening of three new Eurodesk points, giving life to the “Northern Milan Eurodesk Network”. Before the project, in the north of Milan there was just one Eurodesk point, in Cinisello Balsamo. Now the network includes the Eurodesk points of: Cinisello Balsamo, Cusano Milanino, Cormano and Bresso. All of them are inside the municipalities. From now on more people in our territory know what Eurodesk is and what it does. This also thanks to our advertising campaign inside the Cormano-Cusano Milanino railway station for the two most important months (May and September) which is visited by hundreds of people everyday.

Impact:

"Informazione: to be part, take part" has proven to be a very important tool to strengthen and consolidate the partnership between municipalities in order to share missions and strategies. The network helped widespread communication actions on the territory, and has been able to offer the Eurodesk service for all young people of the territory. Furthermore, it had a great impact on young people for two reasons: in the first place the project allowed them to easily learn more about the European opportunities offered by the Eurodesk point in their municipalities, and secondly, it gave them the chance to strengthen their competencies thanks to our training course and guidance. Since the project involved local youth from various backgrounds (some with language difficulties others with lack of project management skills) the training courses became the opportunity to develop their skills and have the professional support to implement their own ideas. As mentioned above, the results were excellent because all the ideas became real projects. One of these was funded by the European Solidarity Corps program, one project was finalised and will be applied to the same program in February 2023. The last two ideas became two excellent projects for a high school “PCTO”, a Pathway for Transversal Skills and Orientation that all the Italians students need to do during their schools years.