First week, Internet and youth integration in Euro Mediterranean area

First seminar, Internet and youth integration in Euro Mediterranean area

In Europe and around the Mediterranean area, various associations propose tools more or less elaborated to get an appropriation of the communication tools: Internet, video, photography, numeric creation, youth press, radio......elaborated by the youth.

The associations Initial, RedActiva, VECAM, organize together the seminar "Internet and youth insertion in the euro Mediterranean area" in Marseille, from the 1 to the 5th of October. The purpose of this seminar is to elaborate a meeting between 50 people from organizations of the youth interested by the social insertion using communication tools, and by the formation and the citizenship "prise de parole". The seminar will help to identify and share the different practices and to invent new ones adaptive to the organization's needs. This seminar is organize in the first week of insertion, youth and internet.

Seminar's context

Various experiences have been developed for using the information and communication technologies for serving cultural and social insertion of the youth in difficulties by non formal education associations. For example we can talk about:

experiences around the web-reportage publications: The webtrotteurs des quartiers (http://www.webtrotteurs-quartiers.org), that helps the expression of youth and the local citizenship participation.
experiences around the creation: in particular video, sound and animation. The media-camps, workshops for creation of multimedia cultural spaces allowing youth to participate to social improvement activities.
experiences around the alphabetization, job searching and social insertion: Fourth World programs from ATD, using TIC allows to pass by the traditional "blocages" in front of the writing and difficult scholar's situations. Allows also to valorize the persons and to give back a positive self image.
Experiences around the international cooperation: The meetings of fragments du monde (www.fragmentsdumonde.org). International universities about communication, scholar e-"jumelage, twinning?", networks of e-correspondents and e-"parrainage". The TIC habilitate to experiment the cultural diversity: building an open image of the world and place oneself to exchange with the others.
Experiences around European mobility: itinerating stays, email uses, online realization of travel agendas, exchange with the populations "meeting?" The Tics help to discover a territory in its dynamic and interactive evolution.
Experiences regarding towards the creation of communities cooperation tools: regarding to activate the citizenship participation in a territory and to help the local development activating bridges between the virtual and the local sociability's (http://redactiva.tk).

The objectives towards democracy improvement, the strength of the access for all to the Tics and the pedagogic practices of those ones are being mutiplicated. And those projects are being held to different levels by the organization associations and by the participants. This work stills since the 90's for the first associations and are getting to be "essentials" for the whole actors of the insertion and the non-formal education.

In this context the seminar takes place in a critical moment. It'll be held at the beginning of the Summit for the Information Society between 2003 and 2005. It will precede the European Social Forum in December in St Denis. Those meetings constitute opportunities for the building of a network for cooperation and exchange about the practices around Tics for the youth insertion in Europe and Mediterranean zone.

Purposes of the seminar

The main purpose of the seminar is to identify and put together the knowledge and abilities of the persons and animators of the associations that will be present around the thematic of "insertion of the youth and Internet". The participants will worked around the identification of their daily problematic and will try together to begin a reflexion and discussions around their practices, their neediness and the initiatives that they are realizing or projecting. Those exchange will be inscribed in the euro Mediterranean area that will be our conceptual shared "cadre".

The seminar will allow to:

- Better mutual knowing between persons and organizations

To know the missions and the audiences of every participant
Exchange about the possibilities of action in relation with each place
Know about the methods of working and the projects that have been realized around TIC and youth insertion.

- Build a network of actors and structures for sharing experiences and pedagogic tools

Identify initiatives and reproducible tools and make a compilation of them using online tools (per example: Espace ressource METIS in France)
Get formed, experiment and test the construction of communication and collaboration tools to work at distance

- Fix the bases of a European long time cooperation. This one can take form by:

An euro Mediterranean meeting for the year 2004 and a youth mobility @dispositive@ pilot by the associations.
Initiatiate common formations, practices and work visits insitu.
Redact a document of propositions destiny to the SMSI (2003/2005) written by the organizations of non formal education.

A network of solidarity around the euro Mediterranean area will help the emergence of new projects and will ability the empowerment of the working methods for those which use daily the communication tools. The direct beneficiaries of those projects will be youth people in insertion process.

Participants to the seminar and project's "beneficiaries":

The participants to the seminar are animators, social workers and project's builders that work daily with youth that are subjects to social, professional and cultural difficulties in the mark of an association, an insertion enterprise and territorial collectivities.

For the participation to the seminar we have mobilized members of our partners structures and we have make a call to others organizations that work in the mentioned sectors. They are belonging to public and associative sector's.

Partners:

The associations Fonds Diwan, Initial, RedActiva and VECAM work in collaboration with structures from Marseille in the organization of this seminar, partners like:
the multimedia space of la Friche de la Belle de Mai, the regional center of the youth information, the Point-Cyb of Panier-Joliette and la Maison pour Tous du Panier and the social center of Baussenque. Will be also presents searchers like Thierry Fabre, Michel Serre and Patrice Riemens that will be implicate in a subject's reflexion and in an active way mean while the seminar.

We have support of the youth program of the European commission and the NON!!!!!. In the same way we are in connection with the department of Bouches-du-Rhône and Var, the region of Provence Alpes Côtes d’Azur and the Caisse de Dépôt et des Consignations direction PACA that give us support and help us to valorise and mediatise this action.

In the same way, we will have partners in the medias, Radio France, Radio Grenouille and the regional press and television will inform about this seminar.

Preparation and the "contents" of the seminar:

The dynamic of the seminar is to habilitate each one to progress parting of its own experiences and discovering the experiences of the other participants. To facilitate the mutual knowing of the partipants, every one is invited before the seminar to fill a presentation paper and to produce a note about the implication of the communication technologies in their activities with youth.

Those presentations will be put online at this address:

http://www.fragmentsdumonde.org/UIE02/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=107

During the four days of the seminar there will be activities around workshops, meetings and visits as the same time of cultural exchanges and cultural times of convivial life together.

The workshops are divided betweens workshops oh mutual meetings and exchange about the opportunities of the communication technologies for youth insertion, workshops of initiation to writing techniques and co publication systems (as SPIP, and publication platforms and platform formation of the networks presents in the seminar: Inter@ctive, Webtrotteurs des quartiers, Fragments du Monde, …) and project construction's workshop

The method of work will be based automatically in the active participation of the seminarists, the aim is to built a collective intelligence around each one's competence.. The workshops will de done in three languages: French, English and Spanish. The language will be chosen at each activity and there will be a group of active persons to help in the translation. If there's Arab talking persons between the participants they will be invited to help if they feel like. The preparation of the seminar will be present in this web and the abstracts of the activities will be put online and traduced in the three languages.

The results of the seminar will be diffused in a web site built to "easily" the distance cooperation between the participants. The abstracts and topics of the seminar will be also diffused through the web sites of the networks, habilitating the youth to participate trough a list discussion and resources centers. There will be tentative to organize the information to be compatible will the existing data bases that exists in the sector of education to medias and youth (Initial, Espace METIS, Média-cités, Inter@ctive, Forum Euro Méditerranéen of youth exchange…)