Many european youths are making changes to break out of their rut, learning something new, doing some volunteer work, engaging in motor activities, and practising gratitude. Through their personal experiences we'll learn how many youths are taking part in improving our social welfare.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Project Finale

With this picture slide show of our "young boredom fighters" and to the melody of "Imagine", a perfect anthem for all of us who believe in our young generations to make this planet a better place to live in, we would like to put an end to a beautiful project through which many youngsters from all over Europe were able to make their voices heard and show the world all they have to share. Thank you everybody for your contributions!

Youth Against Boredom Project Leaders.


Free time survey




We're Laia and Marina, two teenagers from Tiana, Barcleona, Catalonia, Spain.

We've done a survey on free time activities to find out about the interests we share with other teenagers in Europe, in particular, young Polish and Swedish.

Click here to see the survey and the results of it.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Our kids, from"Dimitrie Anghel"School-Cornesti-Miroslava-Iasi-Romania, love circus.Small or old they are fascinated by this great world with wild animals and their shows. The are verry surprised and joyous.














Students from"Dimitrie Anghel"School-Cornesti-Miroslava-Iasi-Romania love their small garden and we care of them.The songs are from a cd-100 Songs for kids.

My students, from"Dimitrie Anghel"School-Cornesti-Miroslava-Iasi-Romania, eath healthy food, because they come from a rural area and they have produces in their garden.That is from a special day.We come from a contest and they want to eath some different like pizza, fruit salad and juice.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

"Youth for future" -Youth conference in October in Miedzyzdroje




















About the youth in the Baltic regions

Youth and youth workers from different European countries met
in Międzyzdroje at the International Youth Conference "Youth
for Future", the 9-12 October 2008. The meeting was a part
of the project "A step towards democracy".The meeting began
on Thursday 9 October in hotel "Wolin" in Międzyzdroje.
After the ice-breaking games all participants presented the
regions from which they came.
And so it was possible to admire pictures from many regions
of Europe,enjoy culinary delicacies and listen to regional
songs. The next day, all welcomed Mrs Elżbieta Mielczarek
-the member of the Westpomeranian Parliament. Then a short
presentation about "A step towards democracy" project was
held. The conference participants could see how the
previous meetings proceeded and review the work of their
colleagues.
Another point was the presentation by Mrs. Małgorzata
Ludwiczek and Paweł Grządko on youth policy in the region
around the Baltic Sea. Next the topic of the youth policy
in the participants, regions was presented with the focus
on the structure of youth councils, and problems of the
young people in different regions.


After a day of hard work, the participants discovered
the old culture of the West Pomerania, went to the Vikings
village in the nearby Wolin.
There a variety of attractions awaited them: a band playing
old music, lessons of shooting from the arc, rowing in a
Vikings boat and eating traditional dishes for dinner.
Saturday began with a talk of Mrs. Zofia Ślęzakowska on the
"Youth in Action" as a tool for the implementation of youth
policy. Then the participants were split into groups and took
part in workshops on the following topics:
1) youth participation,
2) how to use the "Youth in Action" program
3) the challenges of working with the international group.
As way of relaxation after heated discussions,
guided walk around Międzyzdroje and Wolin National Park
was proposed associated. After time spent in the fresh air
afternoon session not only it was a good time for
presentation of the of group work results but a summary
ofthe entire conference as well.
In the evening barbecue the knots of new and old friendships
were tightened.
The young artists from Szczecin performed the fire show and
taught some jugglers tricks. It was a very fruitful meeting
– a good way to mutual understanding and a further cooperation.

Marta Gwizdala, a student from Zespol Szkol Nr 3, Szczecinek, Poland

Sunday, September 21, 2008

My free time

My name is Laia, I’m fourteen years old and I was born inBarcelona, but when I was only some months old I moved to Tiana, a little village near Barcelona, it is very beautiful!

Now I’ll explain you what I do in my free time: I love to meet my friends and going to the cinema, to the swimming pool, to the beach …, or just chatting with them. When I stay at home I like talking with my friends by msn or e-mail very much. It’s very fun! I also love reading my favourite books, especially fantastic stories, like Harry Potter, and a lot of other books. Since I was a child, 7 years old, I practise music because my mother is a music teacher, and now I play the piano and the flute at the music school in Tiana. I like a lot of music bands, but my favourite one is Jonas Brothers. They are a famous pop/rock band from Texas. I really love their songs, which I listen to while I do my homework, in the car, on my mp3…. Apart from that, every Friday I go to my drama class. I like theatre very much, and with my company we do a lot of very funny plays!

Monday, September 15, 2008

The things I like doing in my free time


My name is Marina and I’m going to explain to you the things that I like doing in my free time.

I have some hobbies like playing basketball and I go training twice a week, on Wednesday and on Friday and on Saturday we always play a match in the morning.

I also like playing the violin and every Tuesday I go to my classes in a Music academy. I go to an English academy too because I want to learn it for the future and because I like it, too.

Some days I have no extra classes and I go home and I like reading a lot and watching TV and, obviously, I also have a look  in my agenda and, if I have homework, I do it.

And if I had more time I would go to drama classes because I like it a lot.

Well, these are the things that I do on my free time, and you, what do you do in your free time? 

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Nature offers us a multitude of activities eg: drawing wonderful landscapes, writing esseis or poems full of semnifications and playing joyful games. Teacher's duty is to conserve as well as valorificate these natural beauties.Our students enjoy spending time taking care of the school's garden as well as planting trees."Pure souls in pure environments" it is a slideshow about how our students care for our small garden.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Free time survey in Barcelona, Spain

Hi! We are Marina and Ariadna and we want you to see our presentation about "Free time", an in-depth survery about free time activities and interests among young Spaniards.

To read about our survey and our conclusions, check out this link
http://www.xtec.net/~mjulia33/FREE%20TIME%20ARIADNA%20AND%20MARINA%20short_archivos/frame.htm

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Basketball my hobby

Flowers - our passion




We are the students of Technical School. We are in the class of landscape designing. We are 19 years old and we are very proud to have chosen this school. Our school offers excellent opportunities to study our chosen field. One of the most important opportunities provided by our school is apprenticeship.



We have apprenticeship sessions at the florist's. We attend our apprenticeship sessions every Thursday.We all make notes of every session of our apprenticeship in a special apprenticeship book. We describe the jobs we did,what we learned,what we discovered.

Our apprenticeship sessions are very interesting. We get to know many differents plants and how to look after them…

KATRINA CHODYSZ, OLA STEPIEN, ANIA HOLEWSKA

What do you do in your free time? I snowboard!

Hello my name is Arnau and I’m going to talk about snowboarding.
At first when I was three years old I practiced ski My first teacher was my father, who taught me all about this winter sport. At ten years old I stopped skiing and I started snowboarding. This time it was my brother who taught me, but only the basics of this fantastic and wonderful sport. My real teacher was Marc, my coach, and with him I learnt a lot.
At first, I was bad but with practice I became so much better, especially because I practiced snowboarding all year: in summer I went to the French Alps and this winter I went to La Molina, where my snow club is.
Now I’m even participating in some competitions. This year I participated in a lot of championships but the most important ones were the Catalan and the Spanish championships.

Monday, March 31, 2008

''MOMENTO MEI'' Theatre group from Szczecinek, Poland





Agata Gajek, the student of landscape designing class from Szczecinek, Poland

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Winning the basketball tournament in Szczecinek





Our basketball school team won the basketball tournament in our city this year. The competition was very exciting and we fought till the very end. The whole school was very happy about hearing the news.
One of our basketball team members, Marcin Nocek, is a professional player in the local team of Kotwica Kolobrzeg. He also became the best player of the tournament. Congratulations!

Katarzyna Podgorska,
English teacher from Zespol Szkol Nr 3 in Szczecinek



Tuesday, March 25, 2008

EASTER TRADITIONS IN OUR SCHOOL




It has become the tradition in our school to prepare Easter baskets as a way of expressing Easter symbols. They reveal artistic talents of our students. The Easter Basket is the manifestation of young great abilities and a sense of artistic spirit.




The baskets are prepared by students who attend the classes of landscape designing. They choose their own way of doing the basket and we think they are fantastic. The local authorities received the Easter baskets of the students, but others were also lucky to get them.



Katarzyna Podgorska, Zespol Szkol Nr 3, Szczecinek Poland




Saturday, February 9, 2008

For our students it is the most important thing to encouraging their creativity.This is the products from a regular craft cours.The pumpkins, the potatoes, the beans and the onion was gathering from their own garden.Entire work was created by their imagination and mastership.The small kids love to cut and paste some pictures because they want to participate with some things at this activity. Primary teacher Dorina Marin

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

A Toothbrush makes a difference, Värmdö, Sweden

Jennifer, My volunteer work
What was the project about?
When I attended ninth grade in compulsory school all students made an agreement to volunteer to a school in Russia, in S:t Petersburg. The school is a boarding school and they sent pictures of the school, pupils and their teachers. Their beds looked really uncomfortable, they slept in double beds and the bed mattresses were so thin and they did not have manner bedclothes. I really felt sorry for them when I first saw those pictures. I was chocked that anyone could live a life like that, suddenly my life seemed so perfect! My doubts about signing the agreement was completely non-existent. I really wanted to volunteer to those poor children, I wanted to do as much as I could for them. Even though it wasn't enough for them. Their lives were not going to change, but me and my classmates obviously gave them a memory for life.
My school gave me a paper with all information and all rules about this excellent project. We were supposed to volunteer clothes, toothbrushes, candy and outdoor clothes. And if we wanted to send them other items we had to ask our teacher first, because we were not able to send whatever we wanted to, there were a lot of rules as I said earlier.
All students in my school that accepted to volunteer received a cardboard where we were going to put all our items in. When I packed down all items I started to think about how their reaction were going to be like when they opened up their boxes and reciewed all presents we have sent to them. I hoped they would be happy and grateful, which they luckily became. After a few moths they sent a letter with pictures of themselves when they wore our clothes and ate candy as real sweet tooths. They were smiling big and they looked grateful as I hoped they would be. It felt good to attend to this project, I am willing to do it again if anyone arranges a volunteer project. Maybe I am going to start something by myself, or maybe not. But it was greate to give innocent children something to remember in their lives. They deserve much better, and I do respect peoples who want to take part of a similar project like this.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Värmdö Mates, Sweden



Värmdöpolarna is a unique ten-year-old concept where the authorities work together with teenagers. They consist of mobile units, each group of teenagers have a supervisor and mingle where young people usually get together in the weekends. In close contact with the police and parents their goal is to make the streets safer, avoid conflicts among the younger generation and also to create a network of teenagers. Värmdopolarna also help out at disco nights and other activities. This is a diary that accounts for an ordinary Saturday night.

Värmdö Polarna, Värmdö Mates
by Yanna
8.00 PM we started at the office to talk about the evening and if anybody knew anything that would happen. We were four persons who were working that night, it was our boss Anders, Micaela, Amin and me.Later we were going to McDonalds to eat our dinner, finally! After we have eaten we met up with Gustavsberg's nightwalkers to say hello and explain to the parents that don't know what we do when we are working with all the teenagers.
We continued to Ingarö to visit their nightwalkers and their youth center Brunnen. Then we returned to Gustavsberg to see if everything was alright. When we went to Lugnet, we saw two girls that looked really drunk and we stopped our car to check on them, but when they saw us they started to run. Me and Micaela followed them up through the forest, but they disappeared and we didn't see them anywhere so we gave up and went back to the bus.
When we came back we saw the police and they drove up to us and talked for a couple of minutes, but when we talked to them our phone rang and Amin answered. The people on the phone were really upset and told us to hurry to Hemmesta because some children were standing and throwing big rocks at cars, bus and people. When we arrived to Hemmesta all the children were gone and we drove round all the houses and looked for them but they weren't there so we went back to Gustavsberg to talk to the nightwalkers again.
Amin, Micaela and me had a smoke and Anders went to talk to some people at the pub, Gustav. After a few minutes he called me and Micaela on the walkie-talkie and he told us to come because he has found a girl who was crying and she would not talk to him so he said that we should try to find out if something has happened to her and if we could help her in anyway. We walked over to her and started to talk to her and tried to calm her down, but first she wouldn't listen to us and she seemed really upset and afraid. After ten minutes I asked her what has happened and I also told her that she could talk to us and she could trust us. Then she told us that she had almost been raped by five boys up in Lugnet! Me and Micaela couldn't say a word, we were in shock. All that we could do was to give her water, some blankets and hold her so she felt some safety. We almost carried her to our bus and Micaela told Anders what had happened and he followed us to the bus. She was really scared to talk to him at first, but me and Micaela said that he is alright and he can help her a lot. After a couple of minutes she started to tell him what has happened and he told her that he is going to call the police and she must do a report. I felt really sorry for her, she was only eleven years old, soon twelve, I mean, for heaven sake!
After one half-hour the police arrived and also the girl's parents. It was terrible to tell them what has happened to their little girl. When she had talked to the police, they drove away to see if they could see the boys and after that they went to Södersjukhuset, a hospital.When they were gone, we drove to Shell to get some coffee and something to eat. But we had only been at Shell like five minutes when we saw a lot of policemen, firemen and ambulances on the road to Hemmesta. We followed them and we saw a house in Hemmesta/Kolvik on fire. When we arrived all the people in the house were safe and they were not hurt, thank God. After we had helped the police to keep people away from the house, we worked for another half-hour and then we went home.
This, I work with almost every weekend. It is the best job in the world, (right now) :)I love it because I meet new teenagers every time I work and it's really fun to see them when they are in a really good mood and I really like to help other people. I can honestly say that I hope that more teenagers will work with this and I hope that they and the adults appreciate what we are doing on the weekends!

The tournament of social care houses in Szczecinek, Poland


Once again there has been in Szczecinek a tournament of social care houses in table tennis. The main aim of the competition was a good entertainment and integration of sick people and healthy people. The organizers of the competition deserve admiration, because all event was excellent and everyone had a good time.


Our school has worked with 'Walentynka' , the house of social care, for a few years and that's why we were asked for help to be the referees of the tournament.


There were a lot of spectators who were supporting their favourite players. Each player got a diploma for the participation and the best players received awards.


The meeting ended up with a sweet spirit and all were happy they could be there. The organizers promised to organize a similar tournament next year. So we are waiting for it impatiently. We, as the students, had a wonderful time and we are glad that we could integrate with those people.


The referees: Jakub Sekulski, Wojtek Gersztyn, Wojtek Liniewicz

Operation Dagsverke, Värmdö, Sweden

Operation Dagsverke is an information and collection campaign










The organization was formed in 1961 and since then they have collected over a 100 million crowns. Operation Dagsverke is an organization where children all over Sweden collect money to the benefit of other children. The organization is spread all over the world today. There are many schools involved; their goal is to make a difference in the world. The money should go to poor children, children that don’t have the same chances like us. Every child should have the opportunity to go to school, but in the world we are living in today, that’s not something you can take for granted..

Operation Dagsverke’s message to the world is that “Children help children”. Every child is making money on their own by working at different places. They are doing that because they want to.

Schools all over the world are only doing this once a year, so in my opinion I think we should give them everything we earn that day. There are so many kids out there and they need us, many of us here in Sweden don’t think that making money is necessary; they think that we are just wasting our time. But that’s not true, if every school in Sweden would be involved, that would give so many children a better chance for a fair way of living.

Operation Dagsverke is a unique collection, because all the work is made by pupils. Education is the ground in our society, that’s why it’s so important that we work for justice. Operation Dagsverke is focusing on different things every year, they are focusing on countries that are in special needs. It’s a good way for us in Sweden to learn about other countrie’s situations, we have to realize how unfair the world is.

When I attended 9th grad in compulsory school, we left school for one day in May to work and collect money to kids in Kongo. I was working at home, painted our fence. My mother and father gave me 200 crowns for that, and I gave it all to my school. Of course that’s not a big sum, but it can make a difference because we were over 300 pupils at the senior level of compulsory school.

I hope the children were very pleased by our contribution. I wish that I could have seen their faces when our gifts arrived and when their new schools was build. I like to help people that are in a need, particularly children. I feel for them and it means a lot to me to be able to give them something, even if it isn’t something big.

Operation Dagsverke isn’t only a good way to collect money, because you are doing something fun at the same time. We could choose all by ourselves what we wanted to do that day, no one controlled us. The most important thing was just that we were making money to all those poor children.

If you keep all the starving children on your mind, you would do your best to make as much money as possible. I thought of all the children that don’t have any parents, who are living on their own, their lives are like hell, maybe they are living on the streets, and who doesn’t want to help them? If I could I would have taken them all to my place and fed them with everything I had in my refrigerator, but I couldn’t and I knew it. But I’m glad that the children aren’t giving up, instead they are fighting for a normal life.

The projects are always education-related, sometimes it’s about building new schools, and sometimes it can be to develop the schools. To be able to go to school is the start of everything and that is why operation dagsverke is so focused on that point.

In the future I hope I can be a volunteer worker in Africa and help children to get a better life. My mother and I already have plans to go there when I have graduated from high school.
Emelie 17

Practising sport


Hello!
My name is Laia. I am 12 years old and my favorite sport is gymnastics.
I’ve been practicing this sport for 7 years and I’ve won some nationals tournaments in my country. It’s great fun for me.
I also love singing ,dancing , drawing and going out with friends, too.

Playing sports, learning languages and playing musical instruments




We’ re three girls called Mar, Laia and Helena. We’ re friends and we are in the same class. We like shopping very much, but we know that must do our homework and study as well.
In our free time we play basketball. Every Saturday, we play a basketball match.
We also learn English in a language academy. Laia plays the piano too.

Horseriding


My name’s Jordi Carra I’m 13 ears old and I love horseriding.

I like this sport because it is amazing and fun.

To rid e a horse, first ypou need to prepare it (brush it, clean its mane, its tail, etc.) and then you must put the chair and the reins on it.

The only risk is that you can fall off the horse and get hurt.

Here is a photo of me galloping.