The second edition of our ideas workshop has just passed. We discussed the needs and wants of young people in Burgas and the region. We worked with the youth to identify and understand problems and then tried to find workable solutions for them. The main goal of the workshop was to give space to young people to work on ideas that are both interesting for them and also meaningful to the community.
The format of the event was World Cafe in 2 rounds – participants worked in groups to discuss issues in several different areas: Cultural Life, School Environment, Ecology and Youth Spaces. In the second round of the activity, teams changed their tables and discussed the cause and effect of problems that the previous group had brought up in the given area.
The last part of the event was the discussion of the real solutions through which a specific problem can be pointed out or solved. The students received a simplified project proposal form and in it they had to write down their ideas in more detail. All teams then presented their ideas and received feedback and questions from the group and youth workers.
A special guest of the workshop was Boyana Radeva – youth worker from the Youth Center-Stara Zagora, who has a story about innovative youth initiatives in her city that happened with the help of the center. We believe her story was helpful and inspiring for everyone.
The event gathers a lot of positive feedback from the participants – through teamwork, dialogue and informal activity, they have the opportunity to learn a lot about how to identify a problem and how to work with solutions for it. There was also the “Aha! This won’t work because…” moment, which is they learned that along with ideas come potential obstacles and stumbling blocks that also need to be anticipated and worked through.
We thank all the users for the love (body and spirit!) on Sunday afternoon, we thank Boyana for the inspiration, as well as our hosts from the “Peyo Yavorov” Regional Library for the hall and the assistance to make this event happen. We are waiting for everyone at the third edition of the workshop – you will soon find out when it will take place.
