Virtual Exchange for Balkan Youth

ongoing

Virtual Exchanges for Balkan Youth (VEBY) is a 3-year project that focuses on enhancing the participation of young people with fewer opportunities in virtual mobilities, and the building the skills of youth workers and educators to foster such inclusion, along with medialiteracy and peacebuilding attitudes. The Project's consortium consists of youth organisations from neighbouring Balkan countries, which share differences in their post-conflict affairs and economic levels, but commonalities in ethno-diversity, multiculturalism and the need for inclusion of minorities. Another shared current issue the Partnership's communities are facing is the global phenomena of the COVID-19 outbreak which has brought more interaction with and through the digital world, but at the same time more dangers, due to the rapid and frequent spread of fake news. In combination with the social distancing and social alienation that took place globally, young people found themselves unprepared in the face of social exclusion, and isolation with only access to a constant flow of unfiltered information. In this way, young people's personal and social well-being has been and is undermined, enhancing polarisation, division of opinions and lack of critical understanding, issues that consist of a reinforcement to the geo-political issues that the Balkan countries are already facing. This Project aims to foster and promote the inclusion, tolerance, media literacy, soft skills and activation of young people in the Partner's Balkan communities by providing them with educational opportunities from trained youth workers, which are low threshold and participatory - virtual youth exchanges - attempting to reach the ones that are facing social obstacles to participate in such opportunities.