I would like to present you to digital Youth Magazine Libertas, a project supported by Youth Association creACTive.

Libertas is a digital magazine published every 5th of the month. The magazine is assembled by volunteers who work on coordination, communication and design, and it includes articles from contributors from different countries in the world.
Every month the magazine has a different main topic and contributors are invited to share their thoughts and ideas about that topic, but are also free to write a music, book or movie review, about a travel destination or make an interview with an active youngster in their local community.

Libertas aims to promote intercultural awareness and to be a place where young people can freely express their thoughts and opinions on different topics, encouraging a feeling of global citizenship.

The selected volunteer will be responsible for:
1. designing the magazine;
2. updating the web site with news, events, articles, etc.;
3. looking for events to include in the magazine;
4. contacting different magazines with similar interest for cooperation;

For this purpose, we are looking for volunteers with experience on graphic design and interest in journalism. Please attach samples of previous works.

Interested to join? Please contact Daniel Nunes at daniel@kreaktiv.mk

Summary of the project
This Exchange is planned to provide guidance to participants in developing their knowledge and understanding of cultural diversity throughout its implementation.
During the eight day programme young people from seven countries with different cultural backgrounds will be involved in planning and organising their own activities, experience a decision -making processes, responsibilities and to witness a new culture and values. They will work together in collecting and testing different creative and peaceful games that their parents played in the past, instead of the violent ones that are present today. The games will assist in the promotion of multi-cultural understanding which is closely related to aspects of personal and social development where participant’s self-esteem is promoted and participants are encouraged to think about and respect the feelings of others. The project will help to re-discover the fun of learning and playing together, trying games played in other counties and cultures, as well as offering participants the chance to share their own favorites. Structured activities such as: collecting peaceful and creative games, research, adjustment and preparation for displaying on web pages with the collected games, community field trips will offer the participants an opportunity to learn about themselves learn more about other cultures and ultimately change their lives and communities.

To find out more information about the youth exchange please click the following LINK.

In the 15 to 19 of September, in the Pivo fest, the creACTive team along with the cre8tiv8 team started the Eco Skopje Festival. With the support of the organization of PivoLend and also from our organizations, creACTive and cre8tiv8.

The main motivation behind this project-festival is relaying in a hope; the hope for a clean environment. People in general are careless about commune goods – this is one of the reasons that we have environmental problems. Just a simple reflection question: “To whom the environment belongs to?” – Hard one I tell you – but the answer that most of you will think of will be “To all of us?” In this case we are the worse owners ever – we enjoy nature and in the same time we destroy it with our careless actions and low interest upon its problems. We act careless when we see garbage around our house or even throw garbage where we feel like – because somebody else will pick it up! These attitudes are unfortunately a characteristic of the most of the people no matter in what city they live in. Some cities are more or less developed in processing the garbage – still this is not an excuse to trough garbage where I feel like. The ultimate solution is a high culture of recycling and a strong education and respect for what we own – the common goods!!! This is one of the reasons for which we decided to start this project and continue it through seminars and trainings. The solution lies somewhere between the involvement of the authorities and the involvement of citizens. Until now we think that we have a failed marriage. Still, we have the hope of a positive change and we act towards achieving this goal.

But first of all, let’s start from the beginning; our first step was to create a TV spot. With the help of Tijana we could manage to film and edit the movie, which can be seen here

Eko-Skopje Festival Promo from Tiago Cardona on Vimeo.

In the festival, our first move was to build 3 big recycle bins, for cans, paper and Plastic, a long day of work, but in the end, our work was done In the next day we started the activities, with a lot of curious people, we did activities such as recycling paper, badges made of bottle caps, ashtrays made of cans, wallets created from used milk and juice cartons, necklaces with painted pieces of recycled paper, etc.

I must admit that the final result was good, we show to everyone that with useless material that you have at home, you can make beautiful art

Carolina Nunes & Tiago Felix

Check the web site of the Youth Club to find out the new activities

http://sk.kreaktiv.mk

Nowadays there are a big number of societies around Europe that are strongly divided/segregated on the basis of people’s different backgrounds. Youth organizations and youth workers from such countries meet great challenges in addressing the issues arising from these conditions, and in establishing relations and trust between young people.

This project gathered together youth workers and social workers who face these issues in their countries and who are interested in developing knowledge about this subject. The learning process was intended to develop both skills and knowledge for developmental work in this field.

The main aim of this training course was:

exploring the role of youth/social workers in divided/segregated communities which are divided by ethnicity, religion and/or language etc.

The objectives:

- To explore and understand the effects of divided communities on young people

- To explore the role of young people in breaking down barriers and institutionally established divisions

- To compare experiences of youth organisations from different divided communities from

across Europe

- To increase capacities of local organisations to work in divided communities through the

sharing of grass root methods, approaches and campaigns in tackling segregation

- To directly develop participants’ skills and competences that they need in order to work with the target groups in their local communities.

There were 22 young people from: Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Austria, Czech Republic, Belgium, Wales, Northern Ireland and France.

These 6 days the participants had opportunities to share their stories from their experience, to learn more about the other’s problems, to plan and implement small workshops with local youth from Struga and to come up with new interesting creative ideas that can be implemented in their local communities in order to improve the situations in terms of segregation and division.

The participants not only that gained new knowledge but they also have developed their skills and capacities to work more efficiently in the field of youth work with the youth living in those segregated/divided communities. The participants experienced an intensive program that helped them to understand that these issues can be really delicate and sensitive and because of that can bring many emotions and frustrations. That was also a learning point where participants’ awareness about these issues has been raised.

All in all, the training course offered vast space for learning about the others and have great fun.

Again, the Youth center Kreaktiv gave an opportunity to the youngsters from Kavadarci to participate in youth exchange on abroad. Five members from the center on age from 13 to 18 years, together with a leader- employee from Kreaktiv, were part of a group of 38 participants that attended this exchange. Beside Macedonia, there were also participants from Belarus, Germany, Island and Belgium.

The exchange started at 28th of July and it lasted until 7th of August. It took place in Ostend, the most famous touristic city and this year’s city of culture in Belgium. The purpose of the exchange was preparation of a small play that was presented on the last day of TAZ festival (Theater Aan Zee- theater on sea). It is a festival for drama and music traditionally shown in the past sixteen years.

The participants had the honor to work with two professional actors who helped in the preparation of the play, but all the ideas were given from the youngsters. The final result was a postmodern drama, a performance that lasted 30 minutes and it was shown in front of 300 people.

Despite the rehearsals for the show, on this youth exchange the youngsters had also a lot of fun. “We had a great time, we made a lot of new friends, during our free time we practiced beach sports, rafting, kayaking… and every evening we visited concerts and plays from the festival “-said the youngsters that participated in the exchange .
As before, in the future there will be more exchanges to come for other young people from Kavadarci to participate.

“You don’t have to win it, just don’t lose it.” Quoted by Ray Lewis.

Not everyone has the talent of being a football player and even fewer make it further then sitting in front of the TV with remote control in their hands or playing video games. The ways to be part of the World Cup are many, you can be among the most numerous ones who are just watching football matches with beer and snacks or
you can go deeper and disappear into the game world of FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa. In the description of the video game you can read: “feel the passion, the feelings and the rivalry between the nations” – so your dreams can come true, just not in reality”.

There are also football hooligans who seem to be more into disturbing, destroying and fighting then actually cheering and watching the matches. They could easily be fans of whatever conflict, just if there’s room for them to act all their destructive and unruly behavior leading the fans into panic and people being killed by fences and walls collapsing. And what is the point of it? Join a boxing club or something I would say.

Personally the World Cup doesn’t interest me at all, but sure, I can join others if they want to watch, and to watch them watching football matches is an amusement itself. The people get crazy, cannot move their eyes from the screen until it´s recess, in the best case, and before/after the game the only thing on their mind is the upcoming or the just played game. You see them jump, scream, throw things, laugh and comment as if they were there, as a part of the team they are cheering for. Are they really so obsessed of being someone else
that they cannot stay in their reality?

Kicking a ball, running and trying to trick each other just to be able to get the ball into a net and then scream, put the t-shirt over your head and get applause – the dream of lot of people. What does it mean to have such dream?

The World Cup emerges a lot of different reactions, feelings, behaviors, thoughts and mood from people all over the world; everyone is in it in one way or another. This event is a whole science if you think of it connecting all people, instead of looking at it as just a game and TV show.

Read the July issue of Libertas at http://libertas.cre-act-ive.org

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

for the international Training Course

“Young people in divided communities!” – Exploring issues and strategies for

young people and youth organisations working in divided communities

- Struga, Macedonia: 7th to 14th of September 2010 -

Nowadays there are a big number of societies around Europe that are strongly divided/segregated on the basis of people’s different backgrounds. Youth organizations and youth workers from such countries meet great challenges in addressing the issues arising from these conditions, and in establishing relations and trust between young people. This project will gather together youth and social workers who face these issues in their countries or who are interested in developing knowledge about this subject. The learning process is intended to develop both skills and knowledge for developmental work in this field.

Eligible countries: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey and United Kingdom.

To read more about the project please click here

To download the application form please click here

Complete application form send to contact@cre-act-ive.org Application deadline 10th of July 2010. Please note that only selected participants will be contacted.