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Dear Friends,
Welcome to the 19th issue of "Worlds of Experience", dedicated to the theme
"''Youth Volunteering in Arts and Culture''.
Organisations promoting arts and various forms of cultural expression, which
are willing and able to host young volunteers, are usually far and few in
between. We are therefore quite pleased that this newsletter features a few
testimonials of young volunteers that had the opportunity to work in projects
enhancing various types of art education and handicraft production. It is
heartening to note that these contributions show that solidarity and mutual
support, as well as the intercultural dialogue can take place and can be very
enriching in settings that are primarily dealing with people's creativity and
people's empowerment through arts.
Volunteer's Voices begins with the account of a Mexican volunteer working in a
dance school in Germany, in which she discovered that she had artistic skills
she never thought she had and learned that art education is crucial for
everyone's personal and professional growth. While a Swedish volunteer in
Ghana experienced how effective it is to empower women and promote their
independence enhancing their artistic and handicraft skills, a young French
volunteer in Mexico whose feet were swept by the "Vientos Culturales" (cultural
winds) in Chiapas, added more currents through teaching painting and
providing respite and support to disadvantaged children. A British volunteer at
"Mozarte" had the invaluable opportunity to learn some of the traditional arts as
well as see how an organisation gives full-time employment to artists without
hindering their own creative practice. After the testimonial of a French
volunteer that worked at the Ethnographical Museum in Moldova, this section is
closed by an uplifting report of a German volunteer who volunteered at a music
school in South India and lived a life that consists of music, of children and love.
News from Int'l Organisations feature, among others: an event co-hosted by the
United Nations Programme on Youth on "Measuring Youth Development"; the
next International Youth Day dedicated to "Sustainability: Our Challenge, Our
Future"; the 2011: European Year of Volunteering; the declaration of 2009-19
as the Decade on Youth Development by the African Union; and the
forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
News from NGOs reports on: a video festival on migration and diversity; the
hike of a group of Africans who climbed the Mount Kilimanjaro to combat
climate change; a NGO conference to promote Global Learning as a driving
force for change towards a sustainable future; a do-it-yourself guide for leaders
and facilitators of organisations promoting social change; and the Oxfam report
on poverty.
ICYE Programme News starts with the recent 60th Anniversary celebration of
ICYE Germany, a brief description of an Euro-African EVS Seminar and an
Euro-Latin American seminar of women empowerment projects, the ICYE New
Zealand Yearbook, and the recent ICYE training seminar "Step by STePs!"
Wishing you an enjoyable read, we would like to encourage readers to send us
their articles and pictures for the next issue of "Worlds of Experience", which
will be dedicated to "Youth and women's empowerment" and will be published
at the end of October 2009. Please send your contributions to icye@icye.org ,
before 30 September 2009.
Warmest Wishes!
ICYE International Office
This and previous issues of "Worlds of Experience" can be viewed and downloaded as a
PDF
file.
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