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ENOA (European Network of Animators) Contact making Seminar - (Poland, 2006 10-18 February)
"Reflection and exchange of competences and the experiences for promoting active youth participation"

ENOA Contact Making Seminar
Olsztynek, Poland
February 10 - 18, 2006


The main objective of the seminar was to establish contacts for future projects focused on active youth participation as well as to share and create new tools and methods for youth workers to use. Finally, the aim was to establish a link between Enoa (European Network of Animators) and the different participating organizations.

The seminar was a very useful tool for all the participants and their organizations in terms of having an opportunity to learn, share, and confront different methodologies of working with youngsters within different realities and different target groups at the local, national, and international levels.

The topic and concept of animation was also an object of debate and research in the seminar. The use of animation in the different realities of the participants was an important dimension of the seminar, because it created a great level of self-awareness.

The word "animation" was explored in groups with the aim of finding a common meaning applicable in all the different countries that were represented in the seminar. Then this common meaning was confronted with the definition of ENOA, which is:

"At a certain level, we can talk of animation as 'making things move or happen' - much as animators do of cartoon pictures. In this way, in some of the literature concerned with community development, animators are discussed as 'motivators'. At another level there is something more soul."

Another point of view, which ENOA also identifies with, was also presented to the participants.

"Animation is that stimulus to the mental, physical, and emotional life of people in a given area which moves them to undertake a wider range of experiences through which they find a higher degree of self-realization, self-expression, and awareness of belonging to a community which they can influence." (Simpson 1989)

Participation (Active Youth Participation): To participate means to take part in something. There are a number of techniques to make people be participative but before we use those methods we need to know IN WHAT we want them (young people) to be active! In society in general, in local life, in the civil society, in the local authorities...

Roger Harts's theory can be a good example of the steps to reach Active Participation:

NO PARTICIPATION - MANIPULATIVE PARTICIPATION - PARTICIPATION ADVISORY PARTICIPATION - ACTIVE PARTICIPATION

After getting to know the meaning and the different levels of Active Youth Participation (AYP) throw the eyes of ENOA, we could be confronted with the methods used by each of us, and analyze them: what we want, where, with whom, how, for whom...?

Pedro Malhó