FEELING EUROPEAN – International Youth seminar, Lanskroun, The Czech Republic,
Youth programme of the EC

During the period 5th April to 10th of April 2003 several members of DIA-SPORT Association took part in a particularly interesting seminar devoted to the topic "FEELING EUROPEAN". The seminar was organised within the framework of the Youth Programme of the European Commission. The hosts of the seminar were from the Czech Republic - the SZEŠ (a secondary specialized agricultural school) in the town of Lanškron and the House of Culture in Dolni Třešňovec.

Representatives of 8 different European countries, both EU Member States and accession countries participated in this event - the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Germany, Great Britain, Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. All of them were more or less experienced youth workers. It was a seminar for new contacts making the main aim of which was getting and offering new information from this area (youth, free time, various activities in the art, culture, sport, education, environmental protection, cultural heritage, etc.).

The important part of this seminar is valuable coordinators information about the successfully implemented projects within the framework of the programmes Youth, Leonardo da Vinci, Socrates, etc. as well as establishing new contacts that can help the interested parties in the process of applying for new projects.

All of the participants made presentations on the fields of activities in which they are working and many up-to-date topics such as accession of new countries to the EU and the problems of enlargement, policies related to racism, xenophobia, drugs and youth, towns and villages improvement, etc. Since the predominant part of the invited participants were teachers or persons dealing with the educational area, most of the topics covered were social integration and special education for children with disabilities, vocational training and e-learning, specific methods for work with youngsters, educational methods, resources, environmental protection, etc.
A part of the seminar programme were also sightseeing of places of interest and the town's surroundings, the visits to the town hall and a discussion with the mayor on cultural heritage issues and many others.

The members of DIA-SPORT Association made their special contribution to this seminar by delivering professionally a presentation on BULGARIA - a general overview, the activities of the association, and especially on the good practice on European projects. They tried to focus the attention of the other participants to the main issues related to the project's cycle management - project development, implementation, coordination, contacts, time and funds management, reporting, monitoring and evaluation, etc., by giving as example one of the successfully finished projects under the coordination of DIA-SPORT Association and summarizing the main conclusions that everyone working in the field of projects should bear in mind.