Moved and yet without much mobility – that was 2020 for the Competence Centre for International Youth Work and non-formal education // KINDERVEREINIGUNG Leipzig e.V.
2020 was an eventful year. For us, as for many, the year was marked by many challenges, changes and steep learning curves. After we had to complete a painful contraction process at the beginning of the year due to funding expiring at the end of 2019 and unsuccessful funding applications, we are now looking optimistically into the future.
“End Global Warming!” Greek-Finnish-German youth meeting in Finland, January 2020
We are very happy that we were able to hold an international youth exchange in Finland with young people from Greece, Finland and Germany in January 2020. The groups met near Tampere for eight days. Together they dealt with the challenges of global warming.
International youth encounters postponed to 2021
Since traveling this year was not possible except for our first youth meeting in January, we have postponed all planned and approved meetings to 2021. There are currently seven youth encounters and a training for skilled workers, with a few more to be expected if all of our further plans come true as we thought.
Local summer project with photo exhibition “we are all here”
In the first week of August we carried out a local summer project in Leipzig with young people from Leipzig who were not allowed to host their partners from Thessaloniki, Greece. They had a good time doing graffiti and photography workshops and there was even an international exchange of photographs, Our partner organization “Anichkov Dvorets” from Saint Petersburg had sent us photographs in advance that the young people had taken there. The young people from Leipzig used these as inspiration for their own work. The photos can still be seen on https://gallery.kvleipzig-international.de
Boom of digitalization also for us
We
- have launched an Instagram-Channel: @wirweitweg_kvleipzig
- have, together with partner organizations from Portugal, Finland and Greece, applied for a Strategic Partnership (LA2) in a special call from Erasmus +, with which we want to develop a digital simulation game for international, participatory encounters over the next two and a half years – if approved;
- are currently starting local groups of young people on a digital basis, who develop their own international youth exchanges participatively and start this project also in the rural area of Saxony, 2021-2023.
We have used this year of standstill to develop professionally, digitally and personally. We are optimistic about 2021 and look forward to the coming projects and that we will soon be able to get closer physically again.