Huddersfield Pakistani Community Alliance (HPCA) together with Youth For The World (YFW) and partner organisations initiated the project “YOU-th & HEAL-th" with participants involved both in youth field, healthy life & conscious lifestyle.
We were 8 partners from UK, Malta, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Armenia and Ukraine with 40 participants in total.
The majority of the Georgian, Armenian & Ukrainian participants had an Internally Displaced People (IDP) background and came from conflict regions, Participants from Moldova come from deprived urban areas - In their specific social environment they face particular hardships in economic concerns, health service access in difficult and traditional structures dominate the social life resulting in limited personal freedom if comparing their situation to their peers in the urban centres.
The participants from the programme countries will be composed of mixed groups, refugees and migration background which makes their access to societal welfare more complicated and equal access to education and the labour market is not guaranteed.
The main objectives of the project was to:
1. Challenge the perceptions and raise awareness about consumerism (capitalism) culture;
2. Overcoming the stereotypes of eating habits of vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters;
3. Change habits of participants which demonstrate non- conscious life style;
4. To learn how to grow own food (adaptable in the city with low space resources) and how to collect food from the nature;
5. To encourage a healthy nutrition as natural part of the daily routine;
The main activity consisted in a Youth exchange, held in Ureki, Georgia, from 11th to 22nd of April.
The 12 day training programme organised by HPCA and our partner YFW come to an end in Georgia (such an hospitable country).
40 young people came together from 8 countries with many different backgrounds, languages but left as one family. Our young people from UK shy and not sure what to expect left with tears in their eyes and not wanting to leave. This is the power of Non-Formal Education! to unite people and to create a better world. This is the place where colour, creed, religion, ethnicity, background does not matter but rather your humanistic actions and values. Over and out!