During the “Project Night”, young people successively worked step-by-step on the generation of a group project idea and the development of a project plan, which includes defining the project’s goal, identifying the target audience, impact and necessary resources and their sources, sharing their previous experience and learning regarding attracting project funding. . In parallel, their mentors learned skills regarding mentoring youth projects, promoting youth participation and exchanging their experiences.
In general, young people developed a lot of different project ideas that they think are important. Young people want to organize an eco-festival to inform young people regarding the possibilities of environmental conservation, to build environmental objects and to improve facilities in schools – an outdoor classroom near the school, a recreation room, a book exchange cabinet. A lot of emphasis was placed on the fact that they see as a problem the useless spending of free time of young people and various addictions. The use of electronic cigarettes by young people was mentioned as a very big problem, but the young people themselves admit that they do not see how to fight this, so they want to fight the consequences it has on the environment. That is why the Alūksne small group team wants to set up collection points for electronic cigarettes so that they do not end up in regular waste bins or in the environment. Although such sorting places have already been created, they have noticed that they are rarely used, so they want to make an innovation – to create electronic cigarette containers, where there can be two different compartments that serve as a way of voting, changing what is voted for once a month. For example, which movie character is more popular – Spiderman or Batman. The self-governing team of the Kandava Agricultural Technical School wants to create a free time space in the school. Team member Keri says: “We came up with this idea when we realized that it really wasn’t a useful waste of time for our technical school students. They spent their time sitting on the phones or engaged in harmful habits – smoking, drinking alcohol. This idea is to prevent this by creating a space where young people can meet, play games, watch movies, learn and spend their time usefully”.
The team of the “Saulespuķe” small group of Slampes intends to create an outdoor game in the Đūkste fairy tale museum. “The idea of our project is to create a circus in the Džukste fairy-tale museum, but instead of ordinary characters, use fairy-tale characters, because the father of fairy tales worked in Džukste. We came up with this idea because I myself am from Lancers, so I go to the museum quite often. It’s not usually interesting in a museum, our idea came regarding because it’s not interesting for young people there, so we might make a game for the museum.” says Nikola Kuženiace.
Gundega Jēkabsone, coordinator of small groups of Tukuma region: “Latvijas Mazpulki has been holding such an event for the second year and we can see that it has a significant role in promoting youth initiatives and youth participation. The fairy tale gives young people space and time, inspiration and advice to work together to solve their needs. This time, too, we saw that it is very difficult for young people who have no experience to understand the nature of the projects, to define the problem and to choose what I want and can change, but I am satisfied with the result, until the morning of the second day, all teams presented very valuable ideas important to young people. I am very glad that two teams from Tukuma region won the main prize. And I hope that this event will give courage and inspiration to all three teams to also compete in the youth initiative competition announced by the municipality of Tukuma region, as well as to attract other supporters and implement the idea.”
The young people are also glad that they were not afraid and accepted the challenge to participate in the event. Keri from Kandava Technical School admits: “I really liked this event, it was interesting to gain new experiences, meet new people and projects created by others. The result surprised us a lot, we didn’t think we would win.”
Agrita confirms: “It was quite interesting. I was a bit nervous at the beginning because there were a lot of new faces, but in the end I got used to it because everyone was very friendly. The project went like a roller coaster from my point of view, but in the end everything worked out.”
The 632nd Tume regiment, the Alūksne regiment, the self-government of the Kandava agricultural technical school and the Daugmale regiment “Dzirkstelīte” won 100 euros for the implementation of their idea. The prize fund is made up of funds from private donors. We sincerely thank AS “Tukuma Piens” for the opportunity to maintain active energy throughout the night with “Baltais” yogurts and curd cheeses.
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