LAT
Baltic Buffet - Food Fusion is the youth exchange project, that bring together youth from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Spain, aimed to bring together individuals from different cultures to learn about unity in diversity through this project where the theme will be creativity in cooking and in life, culture, healthy eating habits and healthy lifestyles through non-formal learning and experience sharing. Baltic Buffet project involve seminars from motivational speakers, interactive activities and workshops (games, debates, quizzes etc.), through which participants can improve on their core skills and help with their personal development as well as doing voluntary work in the community to help improve the local area.
The venue for the Baltic Buffet - Food Fusion was in Riga, Latvia. The youth learned about how they can come together to combat prejudices, exchange knowledge and learn from each other based on common interests. The theme of the youth exchange is how a simple thing as food intake, when being prepared consciously, can be used to unite one another and learn how we can be happy and healthy by addressing our true needs. They also learned how to cook healthy vegetarian food based on Ayurveda knowledge about types of body.
Project objectives:
1. To create an awareness and appreciation of different cultures. Baltic Buffet - Food Fusion is designed in such a way to help participants learn about the different cultures and the similarities, that exist amongst different type of people.2. Inter-cultural learning for participants about sustainable ways of living, especially in the long term. This is one of the reasons we chose the venue in Latvia, since the ethos of the center is focused on sustainable living.
3. To help youth realize their potential and open their minds to the great impact they can have on world and help them become active citizens and prepare them for European Citizenship.
4. To promote a healthy lifestyle through healthy eating as well daily practice of sports, yoga and meditation.
5. To create an inter-cultural and culinary exchange between Latvia, Lithuania, Spain and Estonia. The aims of our project are:
1. Cultural Diversity - we aim to bring the three Baltic cultures together and harmonize them in a way, that can not only benefit the participants, but can later lead to benefiting local communities of the youth after the youth exchange. The Spanish youth will add some hot south fusion to our discussions. 2. European Citizenship - the project will make them aware of what it means to be a European citizen and how each of us can help the wider community in creative ways through art, music, poetry, and theatre.
3. Participation of young people - participants of this project are pupils, students or young professionals either studying at colleges, universities or recently graduated.
Youthpass and Europass CV
Presentation of the Youthpass methodology is incorporated in workshops as well as personal
reflection of the participants. Working in small international teams gave the participants an
opportunity for active participation, debate, and self-evaluation on a daily basis.
Knowledge and skills that this exchange project offered to participants are covering almost all the
elements of Youthpass methodology. This particularly applies to the advancement of specific
competences that enable improved youth work, increased intercultural competency, communication
skills, foreign language skills, knowledge about European cooperation, presentation skills, financial
management skills, active listening skills, knowledge about quality in projects etc.
Participants shared the good practices of their organizations by preparing presentations that have been followed-up by group evaluation, reflection and discussions. The group leaders will facilitated the acquisition of knowledge of the participants by interactive workshops,
games, quizzes, and evaluation activities.
Everyone received a Youthpass certificate and we encouraged participants to make their own Europass CV as this will help them with their employability in the future.
Participant background
The participants of "The Baltic Buffet - Food Fusion" are young people and workers of the youth of ages between 16 and 30 years. All of us share an interest in relation to art and healthy food, interest in the fight against discrimination, the development of communication skills and the intercultural and interreligious dialogues. It is a varied group of people, with different backgrounds, cultures and religions, with different socioeconomic conditions and with different abilities for learning. Although the level of knowledge of English as a common language is different for each team, it is an appropriate level to communicate without barriers amongst the participants during the activity. All of us have in common the desire to build new friendships with young people from different countries Europe, to live new experiences of both learning and relationships inter-personal, to explore new values and enrich ourselves by sharing cultural and religious diversity. All the leaders of the participating partners are workers in the field of youth, with experience and motivation in youth exchange projects. Each activity is designed so that it can be developed in the same way for both men as for women, and it will be developed so that no part of the group is disadvantaged with respect to the others. We want all participants to be able to join the activities at all the levels, physical, intellectual, emotional and cultural. We will provide the same facilities both men and women and we will make sure that the ratio of man to woman ratio is close to 50:50. Our goal is to form a youth group balanced in age, gender and without space for discrimination.