Dare to ACT online seminar

The Dare to ACT online seminar, part of the Dare to ACT Erasmus+ funded, KA1 project, seeks to provide needed knowledge to educational and support staff in schools and youth centers to recognize and stop violence, bullying, and cyberbullying among and towards youth. 

The Dare to Act project has the following main objectives:

• to reduce violence-supportive attitudes by working directly with young girls and boys (ages 13-18) and by changing underlying harmful social norms and gender stereotypes that drive gender inequality and violence towards and among children and youth;
• through further local activities and international cooperation within and after this project, take part in achieving: Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 - achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls; SDG 4 - ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all; SDG 16 - promoting peaceful and inclusive societies.

The Dare to Act online seminar is organized by The Future Now Association (Bulgaria) as an additional project activity and will take place on a platform developed within another project of ours, namely EURvoice. The EURvoice hub gives an opportunity for creating virtual classrooms, which are easily accessible and convenient for usage. 

This online seminar is organized to equip the participants with basic knowledge on violence, bullying, and cyberbullying, and to help them acquire the most effective ways of recognizing and reacting to them among and towards the youngster that they work directly with. In addition, the participants will be provided with a list of activities that they can implement with the youngsters. These activities are also related to the topic of recognizing violence, bullying, and cyberbullying and are a great tool for effective youth work in this field. 

The OS will be separated into three parts, namely Recognizing 1/ violence, 2/ bullying, and 3/ cyberbullying as each part will have the following structure:

• Theory
• Activity
• Discussion

It is worth mentioning that in this seminar the participants will be equipped with already existing and tested knowledge, derived from the Youth Group Methodology (a methodology started in 2010 by MARTA Centre, a key project partner, aiming to raise their awareness of gender equality, challenge the traditional gender stereotypes and thus reduce the risk for young boys and girls to experience violence and/or to become perpetrators) approach, and will guide them through adaptation of it to local needs and cultural context.

About the facilitators:

Raya Tsvetkova | Youth Projects Manager; Researcher; Facilitator, her experience in the youth field has started with an extended volunteer assignment with the Cedar Foundation, and then expanded through her work as a Head of Trainings and Education Department at Law and Internet Foundation (Bulgaria), as well as in her year in the European Solidarity Corps, in which she worked with young people in Italy. Ms. Tsvetkova is a researcher, youth worker, and project manager in various projects and initiatives, related to supporting youth – in education, media literacy, active citizenship, gender equality, and combatting gender-based violence; as well as to supporting youth workers – in developing innovative methods of youth work, digitalization, and inclusion of vulnerable groups. She is passionate in the domain of research and activities related to youth work, gender equality, social inclusion, NGO (and specifically youth workers’) efficiency, youth entrepreneurship, mentoring, social issues, and sustainable development.

Ali Honaramiz | Youth Worker; Researcher; Facilitator, he has been an active member and delegate of the European Youth Parliament and Model of United Nations (of Thessaloniki). From his early years, he was involved in debates and committees for civil and human rights with a particular interest in refugee and immigrant issues. He has experience working as a tour leader for 5 years, a business development associate for a construction company, an intern for a research center, and a head lab assistant for 4 years for undergraduate and postgraduate university modules. Afterward, he started working as a community mobilizer for the largest refugee camp in northern Greece for the Danish Refugee Council and then continued in the same organization as an Information Management Officer for north Greece. His interests are and not limited to: active citizenship, non-formal education, combating gender-based violence, research, gender, sexual and social equality, intercultural dialogue.