DESS 2009: 7 days, 85 participants, 35 countries… one view: “YOUth Act”!

For the 10th year in a row, some 85 participants joined the Development Education Summer School (DESS). This year, the one week learning experience was held under the motto “Recognizing, engaging, motivating young people as actors of development education, advocacy, campaigning” and hosted by Romania. PATRIR, a Cluj Napoca based NGO took on the lead in co-organising the event with DEEEP. Participants from more than 35 countries met in Cheile Gradistei, Transylvania, from June 21-28 to exchange on youth involvement in development education (DE). Among the participants were also some representatives of Plan Finland’s Children Board, who fed the youth perspective into the discussions.

For the first time in the history of DESS, a so-called “mission impossible” action was carried out with the participants: they had one week, within their working group (WG), to prepare a street action in Brasov, the closest city to Cheile Gradistei. Each working group elaborated a small action, according to its main focus (gender, environmental sustainability, multiculturalism and migration, media). The final “mob action” was organised in Brasov’s main square with participants dancing at the rhythm of “djembe” together with some local people curious of the noise made by the group. Although communicating with local people has been a major challenge for the participants (not many could speak Romanian), the outcomes of the action were quite satisfactory. Aside from the final event, the gender WG organised an action for raising awareness on domestic violence; the youth and media WG prepared a questionnaire on youth and global education and interviewed over 20 people in the street; the sustainable environment group biked across the city promoting the use of bikes; the participants of the multiculturalism WG wore small banners presenting themselves as citizens of the world, rather than of only one country. Furthermore, a “YOUth ACT” facebook group was set up and promoted in Brasov, in order to attract young people, explain what global education is and how and why they should get involved.

During the week, 4 further thematic sessions were lead by experts, namely on “Do no harm” (conflict resolution), “Youth and politics”, “School curricula” and “Creative methods for DE”. Time for networking was also made available through the market place, a small NGOs fair, in which participants could present their organisations and their missions.

For more information - to watch the Brasov action and the YOUth Act clip made by participants - visit the DEEEP website http://www.deeep.org/, or look for the “YOUth Act” group on Facebook, and join it! Further material (DESS evaluation, announcement of the next DESS in Hungary on “Schools and DE” etc.) will soon become available online. For further details, contact Chiara Tripepi c.tripepi@deeep.org and Tobias Troll t.troll@deeep.org.


Information provided by Chiara Tripepi, DEEEP