On Tuesday 24 May 2022 there took place the opening conference of the Spolu Bližšie project, supported by Norway through the Norway Grants and co-financed by the state budget of the Slovak Republic.
The aim of the Spolu Bližšie project is to build a multifunctional centre which will become an inspiring and supportive environment for children and young people. The project activities will gradually bring comprehensive services to children and young people, taking into account their diversity and differing needs.
The conference was attended by representatives of the applicant, members of the town council, project partners, youth workers in our town, town hall employees, invited guests from primary schools, the special school and the town library, youth work representatives from the town of Spišská Nová Ves and, last but not least, the young volunteers who actively helped prepare the conference.
After the official opening of the conference and an introductory presentation of the project and its goals, the floor was given to Mayor Jozef Kuna, who outlined the project's activities, briefly presented the plan for building a community garden and wished the project every success in the future. The individual project partners then took the floor.
The civic association Expression o.z. represented by its statutory representative Helena Zadžorová presented its work with children, young people and volunteers. It described the activities of the FACE CLUB youth club and the newly created Pôjd education centre.
Igor André from the Kežmarok Platform for Social Inclusion presented the work of this association. He highlighted the importance of inclusion and of working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds after they finish primary and secondary school. He also presented the activities their organisation will carry out within the project, namely career, individual and group counselling and fieldwork with young people with fewer opportunities.
The other two project partners are the Centre for Children and Families Spišská Belá and the Norwegian partner Newschool,, who could not attend and were briefly introduced by Lucia Bafiová, coordinator of the Pôjd education centre and moderator of the opening conference.
The programme of the opening conference also included inspiring conversations with 3 guests from three different areas – education, inclusion and informal youth work.
The first guest was headteacher RNDr. Eva Nebusová from the Ján Antonín Baťa Polytechnic Secondary Vocational School in Svit, who played a key role in saving secondary education in Svit and has also been nominated for Slovak Woman of the Year 2022 in the education category. During the conversation, the headteacher highlighted why students should not just "study" but also get involved in extracurricular, non-formal or international programmes. She told us about the various activities their school takes part in and the impact these activities have on its students.
The second guest in the discussion was Mgr. Stanislav Gurka, director of the Evangelical Diaconia Centre and founder of the Halfway House shelter in Veľký Slavkov, who in the conversation introduced the work with young men after they leave a children's home. He explained the importance of working with this group of people, especially in creating space, a sense of home and acceptance, but also in education towards independence, work and living on one's own. A beautiful example of practice was Zdeno, one of the former clients of the Halfway House, who told us his life story. Zdeno fell several times on his life's journey, but he always got back up, accepted a helping hand and walked on. Today he lives an independent life, has a family and a job, and says he would not trade anything he has experienced for something else.
The last guest of the discussion was a group of young digiPEERS. Miška, Dušan, Jakub and Samuel are our young volunteers involved in the digiPEERS development programme, whose aim is to use trained young lecturers to educate their peers further on online safety and digital citizenship. In the conversation, the young digiPEERS explained to us why it is important for them to spend their time actively; the most common answer was to be useful or to help others. They also told us about the development programme they are part of and explained why the average person needs digital literacy.
The discussions with the invited guests were followed by an open discussion accompanied by tasty coffee and refreshments.
Thank you to everyone who accepted the invitation and took part in the opening conference of the Spolu Bližšie project. We hope it was an enrichment and an inspiration for your further work. Thank you to the speakers for accepting the invitation and sharing their know-how with us, and last but not least, thank you to the young volunteers for their help in preparing this conference. We wish the Spolu Bližšie project much success and fulfilled goals.
