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Start Date & Time
July 24, 2009
All day event.
End Date & Time
August 8, 2009
All day event.
Location
Technical University of Ternopil
Ternopil, Ternopil's'ka Oblast', Ukraine
Event Cost
$14,000
RSVP Info
Name: Illya Symonenko
E-mail: illya.symonenko@gmail.com
Registration Deadline
May 31, 2009
Categories
Peace & Conflict
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 About |
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CACTUS 2009 (Community ACTion Ukrainian Style) is a summer seminar spanning a 10-day period in the city of Ternopil, Western Ukraine. It will involved 40-50 local Ternopil youth and 30 from other cities in the region. CACTUS will be led by a joint Ukrainian – American team of Ukrainian youth leaders and American Peace Corps volunteers.
CACTUS is designed primarily to create a more socially conscious and active generation of youth leaders. We aim to increase community awareness amongst the local youth and introduce them to the basics of implementing own community oriented projects. This is going to come from primarily the class of “Project Planning”, where the students will be given an intro to the concept of running own projects and will have a chance to implement small projects at the seminar and also plan projects to fulfill upon return home. We will also be featuring a “UN/Country studies class”, which will give the participants an introduction to the world’s cultures and also to the notions of debate, civic government and socially-conscious decision making at the government level. The third class “Arts and Theater” will be more of a fun counterpart to the other to and will create an atmosphere of creativity and fun but still giving the participants useful information on creating social projects and increasing their ability to speak English. There will also be several Teambuilding activities scheduled throughout the day that despite having a fun dimension to them will be oriented at teaching the participants about the concepts of leadership and teamwork and the process of working and decision-making in groups.
With these goals in mind we hope that this program will truly instill a sense of community responsibility in the students and confidence in their own abilities to do smaller social works. Aside from the class schedule we have plans to create a project implementation day that would showcase some small projects designed in class and allow the students to experience first-hand that they can accomplish these tasks. There will also be after class social events allowing all the campers a chance to develop bonds and connections that we hope will stick with them and make them feel more comfortable supporting each other in developing and executing their own community projects.
By affecting around 80 young adults directly and embedding in them the notions of leadership, social initiatives and civil society as well as providing them with practical knowledge on carrying out small projects we will effectively be creating a new generation of youth leaders, eager to act on various problems n their community and with experience to do so. They will also be extremely motivated as we want to both show them how positive is it to give to one’s community and the personal benefits that it may bring on the example of our staff members and also allow themselves to feel that on their own. Even those that will not be willing to act right away, will nonetheless be enticed by the numerous new opportunities we will show them and will be likely to join us in the future. Plus the fact that the seminar is going to be held in English will work towards giving the participants the necessary linguistic skills to work in an international environment and also participate in similar causes and events abroad.
These 80 participants in their turn will complete several community projects at home once CACTUS is over, many of which will indivertibly be involving friends and locals, thus spreading even further the ideas and values we were trying to promote. Hopefully as they will be getting experience, CACTUS alumni will be able to take this trend even further by creating large-scale projects of their own on the regional or even national levels.
In the long run we aim to nurture a new generation of civic leaders, ready to act and also with the responsibility and honor of civil and democratic society at their heart. Even if the person will not be directly involved with community development right after CACTUS is over, the values that he or she has gained will be a guiding light for the rest of their life and will always remind them of the principles of volunteerism, democratic government and helping one’s community.
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Host Organization
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Youth NGO "Iskra"
Current leaders and members of Iskra have worked closely on organising the International Outreach Programs (www.iocoalition.org) in 2005-2008 and the Youth Engaging Society (YES) program, which is helps active youth to start their first community service project.
Projects currently running or...
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