25/11/2025
Unity Bridges – Day 8 | Friday, 21 November 2025
Open Event: “Challenges and Opportunities of Youth Work in Culturally Mixed Areas”
The eighth day of the “Unity Bridges: Empower Youth to Embrace Diversity” programme was dedicated to an open educational event that brought together all Erasmus+ Training Course participants along with members of the Younost+ team. The day provided an active, collaborative space for exchanging knowledge, experiences, and creative practices related to youth work in culturally diverse environments.
The event featured the following speakers:
• Mary Drosopulos (Greece)
• Kleopatra Vidiadaki (Greece)
• Despoina Papadopoulou (Greece)
• Victoria Vinuesa (Spain)
• Daniel Alfredo Apesteguia Timoner (Spain)
• Said Ramin Rahimi (Germany)
• Teo Tasevski (North Macedonia)
• Michaela Waters (Ireland)
• Anna-Maria Iacob (Romania)
The speakers represented a wide range of expertise in youth work, education, art, technology, and social work, enriching the discussion with diverse perspectives and professional insights.
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Opening Framework of the Event
The day began with brief introductions from members of the Younost+ team and the organisers of the training course. They outlined the aims of the event, the structure of the day’s programme, and the significance of this Open Event as a tool for dissemination, cooperation, and interaction between the participants and the local community.
Immediately afterwards, the event unfolded through two thematic presentations, three group activities, and the presentation of the collective zines produced by participants during the week.
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1. Participatory Art, Technology, and Youth Empowerment
The first thematic session focused on the relationship between art, technology, and youth participation in public life. The discussion examined:
• creativity as a means of personal expression
• participatory art as a tool for social change
• the use of multimedia tools (digital storytelling, video diaries, zines, multimodal narratives)
• the role of technology in promoting engagement and collaboration
Participants worked with a reflective prompt:
“If you could turn one moment of your day into art, which moment would it be?”
This exercise encouraged creative thinking, personal storytelling, and the sharing of experiences.
This was followed by the group activity “Reimagining Our Spaces,” where each group described a community space and envisioned how it could be transformed through artistic or technological interventions. The ideas were collected into a shared word collage that captured the variety of visions generated by the teams.
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2. Intercultural Collaboration: From Challenges to Opportunities
The second presentation explored communication and cooperation between individuals with different cultural backgrounds. Participants examined:
• differences in non-verbal communication (eye contact, gestures, proximity, facial expressions)
• varying perceptions of time and time management
• differences between high-context and low-context societies
• how cultural norms influence everyday collaboration in youth projects
• the skills that support effective intercultural teamwork (active listening, empathy, curiosity, inclusiveness)
A practical group activity followed, using real-life collaboration scenarios. Participants discussed how they would respond to situations that commonly arise in multicultural environments.
The session concluded with a collective discussion on how cultural differences can serve not as obstacles, but as sources of opportunities, creative interaction, and higher-quality youth work.
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3. Presentation of the Group Zines
Throughout the week, participant groups selected one country and created a zine focused on contemporary protests and current social movements.
During the presentations, each group:
• explained its research methodology
• described how information was translated into a creative print format
• outlined how roles were distributed within the team
• presented its artistic and design choices
• discussed the challenges encountered and how they were addressed
The zines showcased a vivid blend of research, creative expression, and coordinated teamwork, highlighting the role of art in understanding complex social issues.
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4. Betzavta Method: Experiential Democratic Learning
The final educational segment of the day introduced the Betzavta method, an internationally recognised approach used to develop democratic competences and equitable cooperation within groups.
Participants engaged in experiential scenarios that helped them understand:
• the meaning of equality within a group
• how collective decision-making works
• how individual needs may conflict with group needs
• how mutual respect is built
• what responsibility means in collaborative contexts
Through the activities, participants observed how democratic processes can strengthen participation, cohesion, and a sense of community in multicultural settings.
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A Day of Collaboration, Learning, and Creativity
Friday’s event was one of the most substantial elements of the programme. It brought together youth professionals from nine countries and offered them the opportunity to share experiences, experiment with new practices, and engage with diverse cultural perspectives.
The atmosphere remained active, participatory, and creative — a day that clearly represents the core values of Unity Bridges: cooperation, mutual understanding, and youth empowerment through experiential learning.
