On 18th of October 2015, an 8 – day training course on urban gardening and youth work, within the project Planting Cities (PLACE), co-founded by the Erasmus+ Programme under the Key Action 2 – Capacity Building in the field of youth, has come to an end.
The TC, organized by CESIE, gathered 30 youth workers from Italy, India, China, Nepal and Slovenia and was dedicated to urban gardening as a means to support social inclusion and community development: through non-formal methods, practical activities and field visits, participants acquired new tools and competencies which will contribute to develop future local activities and to encourage the collaboration between urban gardening & youth work.
It was a very dynamic week of activities for the participants: in fact, they had the opportunity to share and discover the different methodologies and uses of urban gardening in partner countries, to be used as inclusive activities to improve the quality of youth work as well as the sustainability of urban areas. The link between urban gardening and youth work has been deepen practically through field visits to different local realities working in these sectors: Orto capovolto, CODIFAS, Guerrilla Gardening Palermo and la Fraternità. Furthermore, the youth workers had the opportunity to give own contribution to the local community, by cleaning and redeveloping Piazza Mediterraneo, a public space located in Ballarò, a deprived area in Palermo.
In this way, in the next phase of the project participants will able to promote and transfer the recently gained knowledge on urban gardening and youth work to the EVS volunteers.
For further information about the next project activities, such as EVS, please write to giuseppe.lafarina@cesie.org.
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