The Youth Exchange will take place in the beautiful youth resort of Costinești, located on the shore of the Black Sea. Costinești center is the largest youth summer vacation. After several days spent in the tourist resort realizes another specific Costinești: good mood. The youthful and refreshing way of life here can’t be found in other seaside resorts. The resort is situated in the south-eastern Romania, near the coastal strip, 10 m altitude above sea level and 28 km from Constanta.

For the accommodation, we will face the facility of Vila Dumy, a 2-3-star pension, situated at 200 m away from the Black Sea. For more information about the pension, please click here. The address is Albatrosului Street, no. 55 Costinesti, Constanta County. Accommodation will be arranged for two persons/room. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be served at the same location every day. Each room has its own bathroom, modern furniture, and cable TV. There is a free Internet wireless connection available. There is also a limited wireless internet in the public area, the speed might be slow in comparison to your normal internet in your country. Please be prepared that you won’t get a proper internet access for the whole program.

Each group is expected to organize a dissemination activity once they return to their communities. The purpose of this activity is to spread the results of the project among other people. By deciding to take part in this project, the participants are assuming the responsibility of organizing the dissemination activity in their community. More detailed information about this will be provided during a dedicated session, in one of the activity days.

The participants are required by Erasmus+ program to have a valid travel insurance that covers liability to third parties, lost or stolen luggage and heath for the whole period of the projects including the travel days. Supplementary, we also recommend our participants to get the European health insurance card. You are free to choose your insurance.

Note: The travel insurance is mandatory, and without it we cannot accept the participation in the project.

How to buy insurance?

Just google travel insurance and get the one which you like the most. Prices are around 10 EUR per insurance.

✰ Weather conditions: in the area of Costinesti, the average temperature in September is between 22 °C and 30 °C. Please check accuweather.com for more updated information about the weather.

✰ Dress code: Casual comfortable sportswear, slippers or sneakers for indoor and comfortable shoes for outdoor activities. According to the meteorological release, we do not expect rain during our mobility, but you never know, so please pack warm clothes and waterproof jackets and shoes. The beach is 250 meters away from our location so packing your shorts and slippers might be a good idea.

✰Intercultural evenings: each country is expected to prepare a short program to present their culture and eventually to bring some typical local drinks and snacks. The intercultural evening is the time when participants have the opportunity to get to know each other’s culture better in an informal context. We encourage the participants to be as creative as possible in presenting their culture, to use theatre, dances or live presentations. We do not provide video-projector for this event and any kind of promotional video or power point presentation will be presented exclusively in spare time.

✰ Meals: we will provide you with three meals/day and two coffee breaks. The meals will take into account all the participants dietary aspects such as allergies, intolerance, and preferences. If you have any special requirements regarding food (allergies, intolerances, vegetarian, vegan, etc.) you are obliged to mention them in the application form. Otherwise, we might not be able to accommodate your requirements.

To minimize the risk of covid-19 infections we will hold as many activities as possible outside and accomodation will be done at maximum 60% of capacity. The whole accomodation unit will be rented only for the purpose of our project, without foreign guests.

Being a project applied in 2019, our budget does not cover the potential cost of covid-19 tests or other quarantine costs. We highly recommand you to get a covid-19 vaccine minimize even more any risk connected to covid.

Please check with your Emabssy whether or not you are required to have a covid negative test result to enter Romania and to go bact to your country without restrictions. If necesary, we will help you to get tested in a center before departure from the project.

No participant can arrive later than the arrival day or depart earlier than the day of departure. Skipping activity days is also prohibited. For participants coming from Romania the transport will be arranged by us by train.

Participants coming from Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal and Latvia will have to arrange their transport to Costinesti and back and the costs will be reimbursed after the project up to the amounts written in the table bellow.

Arrival in Costinesti: 04 of September 2021

Return from Costinesti: 14 of September 2021

If you are from Romania you do not have to buy travel tickets, we will take care of that. More info about meeting points and tickets will be communicated after you apply.

If you are from Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal or Latvia you have to buy your tickets to Costinesti and back.

After you apply, a member of our team will get in touch with you to help you book your tickets. The process goes as follow:

1. You will show us what tickets you want to buy.

2. Our team member will approve them or help you find better options at better price and times.

3. You will buy your travel tickets up to the amount listed in the table bellow.

4. All the tickets bought online will be sent to us by e-mail in PDF format. If you buy the tickets from train station please send us pictures and give us originals in the project. All the tickets must be bought before project starts.

Tickets bought online and sent in other formats than PDF or bought after 04 June cannot be reimbursed.

5. You will be reimbursed for your travel once the project has ended after signing a reimbursement agreement.

Please send your tickets to info@ingensrisus.ro

Engaging young people in non-formal learning activities and finding innovative approaches that motivate them to get involved has become very important for all youth organizations. In the era of information and images, youths are getting very easily distracted and have a hard way of channelling down their focus towards a common goal. Exploring their hobbies and getting disconnected from time to time from all their digital devices creates space for them to be more present and engage in real social interaction. An activity that contributes to improving focus and clarity is represented by juggling. This is a physical skill involving the manipulation of objects for recreation, entertainment, art or sport. It is perceived more as an activity done in circuses, performed by trained people with years of experience. However, in last years juggling transitioned from being only an activity performed professionally for entertaining, gathering people from disadvantaged environments and encouraging them to work towards a common goal.

The benefits of practicing juggling are various, recent studies have shown that juggling boosts brain development. Research indicates that learning to juggle accelerates the growth of neural connections related to memory, focus, movement and vision. It helps young people that practice juggling to change their focus from a negative situation or their problems towards the present moment and give their best to improve their performance.  When learning to juggle, one is immediately absorbed in the activity. It is almost impossible to think of anything but the task at hand. This makes it a great way to escape any worries, stress or hardships. In addition, it develops hand-eye coordination in ways that improve reaction time, reflexes, spatial awareness, strategic thinking, and concentration. This helps improve confidence as well as athletic ability. Nevertheless, juggling is egalitarian. It doesn’t discriminate by age, size, gender, or athletic ability. A ten-year-old is as likely to be a fantastic juggler as anyone else.

The partner organisations aimed with this project to facilitate a transnational context for young people in which they can learn from each other and feel connected by working at a common goal, exploring their talents. The project addressed also the needs of the partner NGOs by creating projects that foster the inclusion of youths, finding innovative non-formal methods to engage youth in educational activities, increasing their capacities in implementing E+ projects and creating a space for sharing good practices with org. from other three countries. 

The specific objectives achieved by the end of the project are:

• O1. Explored talents in the field of juggling of 40 young participants from RO, CZ, HU and PT by facilitating an international context of sharing experiences.

• O2. Empowered 40 young participants (direct beneficiaries) to promote juggling for improving focus and confidence boost in their communities to at least 200 young people (indirect ben).

• O3. Improved the capacities of the partner organizations to empower youths with fewer opportunities by using juggling as an innovative non-formal method.

Our project involved 40 young people from Romania, Hungary, Portugal and the Czech Republic. The young participants were coming from small communities, with scarce interaction with people from other cultures, as well as from capital cities but who knew very little of Romania and its people. They all shared an interest in juggling and were motivated to share experiences and their culture with the other participants.

The young participants from each country were aged between 17–26 years old and met the following criteria:

• were interested to develop their juggling competences;

• were motivated to get actively involved in all phases of the project (including the preparation of the application);

• were willing to contribute to their communities by disseminating the results of the projects and E+ programme;

• came from small urban environments or capitals, in this way the project fostered the cultural exchange;

• respected the non-discriminatory practices promoted by the European legislation and national legislation of each partner.

All participants have unfolded dissemination activities within their schools and the local community. They shared with their peers and colleagues their personal experience in this project, as well as they promoted the Erasmus+ programme and its opportunities. 

The participants developed through our project trans-disciplinary competences. They increased their problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork competences, concentration ability which lead to a boost of their self-confidence. The competences acquired help them in their personal and profesional lives, being more capable to adapt to different social contexts and interacting with new people. They are more aware of how to use juggling to develop their concentration, focus and how to be more present. Being an intercultural environment reuniting 4 countries participants learned about other cultures, becoming more culturally aware and understanding. In addition. Through the sessions planned the young people developed their social and cultural awareness; learned how to interact in a nonformal context with other youths from a different country; found out how they can benefit in the future from the opportunities that emerged after this YE. The Youthpass certificates reflect their learning outcomes.

As a result of the promotion of E+ during the project, the participants became aware of how they and their peers could benefit from other opportunities of the E+. Our project encouraged a positive attitude of the participants towards cultural diversity. We encouraged our participants to engage and contribute to the creation of other E+ projects, in the medium term. Our project significantly influences our participants’ openness towards other cultures. 

The project contributed to the development of the operational capacity of the partner organisations to apply, implement and participate in other KA1 YE projects, as well as using juggling as a non-formal method in the work with youth. As a direct result of the great cooperation within the partnership, we have applied and approved 2 projects with some of the partners from this consortium. The topic of street animations and other performing arts are recurrent topics the projects applied by us and by our partners. This YE helped us test an innovative non-formal education method among our target group and according to the evaluation results it was highly appreciated by the young people.