Actually it was not the first experience of the network in town, because in 2001 the General Assembly of ENOA has been hosted here. But we can say it was the first time really involving youth in town in order to build projects and exchange experiences. The topic of the meeting itself, “The contribution of youth to the development of local social life” has been chosen like a pretext to empower a process that Sinergie started a few years ago, starting youth projects and hosting and sending long term volunteers abroad. The meeting between the local organization and the network was like a discover for both of us and we saw it was possible to cooperate and to develop at the same time the local and the European dimension in youth projects.
The exchange has been a further opportunity to underline the importance of animation as a tool for social intervention. The participants, coming from Italy, France, Portugal and Romania spent 10 days working together on different actions in the street and they prepared a lot of materials and a many new ideas arise from this exchange. During the meeting the trainers tried to focus also on some technical aspects of the Youth Program. That means they have been showing the different actions and the different opportunities offered by the same program. Some of the participants started to put their ideas on the paper and started to build a project and I’m convinced that very soon we will be able to see some more concrete results of that youth exchange.
Another important concern is about the local impact. Altamura is starting to be used to street animation, something that was absolutely unknown only two years ago. And this is the result of different joint actions (cooperation with ENOA, EVS volunteers, other groups like Mictho who came here) and all of this still let us believe that Altamura is the right place where to establish the European House of Animation.
Altamura, la Murgia e la Puglia (un sito nato da Altamura 2001)