YOUTH, SPORT, ACTION!

The opening conference of the Youth, Sport, Action! project took place in the historic town of Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia, from 10 to 14 April 2007. The participating countries were Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Israel, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and UK. The conference brought together the different country groups (a total of around 200 young people) to develop their projects.

AIM OF THE CONFERENCE
The aim of the event was to inspire and motivate the young people so they can be fully involved in implementing the project activities, and to ensure that participants have the skills and confidence to achieve their goals. There was a strong emphasis on team building, and above all the event was fun. There were also parallel programmes for training a group of young people involved in filming the projects and for project development sessions for the leaders.

VIEW A PHOTO GALLERY OF THE CONFERENCE

PARTICIPANTS
The young people participating were:
- different ages (ranging from 15 to 24)
- from different countries
- from different cultural backgrounds
- with different educational and intellectual levels
- some with physical disabilities or other individual needs
- with different levels of English

ACTIVITIES
One of the aims of YSA was to break down barriers and enable the young people to experience diversity and get to know other cultures. So they spent some of the time in mixed groups with participants from all the other countries. The most appropriate activities for this mixing were the outdoor / physical activities. On the other hand the young people spent time getting to know their project partners and developing ideas about their projects. The workshops also helped to strengthen these relationships.

All the sessions celebrated universal sporting values such as equal opportunity, inclusiveness, participation, team spirit and fair play. The overall aim of Youth, Sport, Action! is to enable young people in the participating countries to understand and share these values, to give them confidence to put these into practice in their communities, and to extend their personal horizons through international contacts.
For more information, please contact Elizabeta Jovanovska and Snezana Velkovska.