Project Description

Our project emphasizes on self-understanding and on the development of innovative ways to improve ourselves. This project consists of an effort to achieve the below objectives:

1. Evaluate the ways by which we understand ourselves.

2. Understand our own strengths and weaknesses.

3. Examine whether our self-understanding is objective.

4. Examine the factors that alter our self-knowledge, such as the limited awareness of HR.

5. Stimulate interest in Human Rights (HR), discrimination and exploitation.

6. Develop skills for better self-understanding.

7. Encourage people to think "out of the box".

8. Develop innovative ideas for self-improvement.

9. Promote the idea of living in a fair and innovative world.

According to researches, 1/3 of people have an active awareness of their strengths, while a limited percentage has enough self-knowledge. Moreover, according to surveys by the "Ipsos Global Advisor" in 28 countries on 2018, 4/10 admit they know little to nothing about HR, while 72% of global citizens feel that HR are important to creating a fairer society. Also, HR are violated, since 2/3 say that some people take unfair advantage of them. At the same time 26% globally stresses the need for freedom of discrimination, which indicates that it consists an important social problem. Furthermore, according to "The Accenture 2015 US Innovation Survey", 84% of executives considered their future success to be extremely dependent on innovation. Considering these surveys, we mention the following: Many people lack self-awareness. Discrimination consists a serious social problem. Many peoples perceive personal vulnerability since they live in places where HR are virtually non-existent. There is need to face consequences resulting from ignorance or deprivation of HR.

In our project we aim to develop our self-awareness, in combination with the promotion of need of the awareness of HR, and to overcome the factors which deteriorate our self-understanding. Moreover, we aim to find ways to discover our strengths and to be as much as possible innovative. Furthermore, we aim to use our strengths and powers to overcome social problems like discrimination and social exclusion resulting from unawareness and infringement of our HR. Through the enhancement of ourselves we also aim to eliminate inequalities and violation of HR, to improve our relationships and to promote innovative ideas for the overall well being.

In our effort to promote the above, this project involves special activities which give the opportunity to the participants to collaborate and share innovative ideas on how to learn better ourselves, how to become better and how self-improvement can contribute to interact more efficiently with other people and ideas. Moreover, the participants will have the opportunity to express their innovative opinions on how awareness of HR and compliance with them can contribute to better self-understanding and elimination of discrimination. Finally, the participants will be able to share ideas on how to live in a more innovative world. These ideas can later turn into realistic action plans that can be implemented by creating other projects or by organizing other relevant seminars in other countries. Such activities will develop the participants' self-improvement skills, the need to be innovative, to be aware of HR and fight discrimination.

During the training, democratic communication will also be promoted through the sensitive issue of the need of awareness of HR and through the discussion about discrimination issues, group work and role-playing activities. The interaction, communication and cooperation between participants will raise awareness of the levels of discrimination in different countries and discussions on how to prevent it. Finally, it will be promoted that through each ones' self-improvement, people can develop freely and without-pressure ideas, which can lead to an innovate world.

To sum up, "OUT OF THE BOX" emphasizes on self-knowledge, self-improvement, innovation and HR. According to Billie Jean King, self-awareness is the most important thing towards being a champion. Through this project, we aim to focus on the need to know ourselves, to discover and "block" the factors that hamper our self-awareness, such as the encroachment of HR, and to be more innovative. Visualizing the person we want to be, will help us figure out what we need to do to get there. One "key" to "unlock" our goals is to think differently. Novelty will reduce discrimination and will raise self-development and cooperation between youth in EU, by promoting relevant activities during this training and by training the participants who will then train and educate young people in their countries, hoping that this project will contribute even at a tiny level, in the participants' further exertions. Anything worthwhile requires time and effort, result worth it. Our future depends on many things, but mostly on us!

Main Aims of the Program

Below are the main aims of the Training that we are organizing which will have an impact on youth workers and will be transferred in their organizations and young people through future projects. Through this training we aim to emphasize on the following subjects:

• To evaluate the ways by which we understand ourselves.

• How do we understand ourselves?
• How do we do our self-analysis?
• Which are our strengths and weaknesses?
• What makes us motivated?
• Which criteria determine the ways we do our self-evaluation?

• Is our self-evaluation objective?

• How do other people evaluate us?
• Which do they believe are our strengths and weaknesses?
• Intersection of different views.
• How do we review our self-evaluation?

• To do freed-from-pressures, fear, discrimination or other "altered" factors self-evaluation.

• Deterioration of our self-understanding and self-evaluation at risk of being subject to discrimination.
• Are we subject to any discrimination and we cannot do objective self-evaluation, because we feel pressure by others or fear or we are deprived of our human rights?
• To learn the importance of awareness of our human rights (and responsibilities).
• To be aware of the human rights.
• To comply with human rights.
• To be freely expressed about ourselves.
• How do we review our self-evaluation? Are we now too lenient or too strict with ourselves?

• To stimulate interest in human rights and racism.

• To raise awareness about human rights.
• To eliminate exploitation.
• The right not to be discriminated against.
• Promote freedom and equality in dignity and rights
• To increase equal treatment of all for the improvement of ourselves.

• To develop skills to understand ourselves and to become better alternatively.

• To encourage people to find alternative activities to assess themselves
• To express freely new ideas for self-improvement.
• To develop imagination and creativity to envision the future.
• To think how social media can contribute to self-improvement.
• To encourage young people to think "out of the box", because in our days those people have more chances to succeed.
• Young people of our organisation and other organisations learn new methods of Non-Formal Education in themes of self-understanding, self-awareness, and self-improvement.
• To develop the idea of living in a fair and innovative world.

TIMETABLE OF THE PROGRAM

October 2020

Starting of the program - first communication with the partners

Webinar about the project for partners organizations

November 2020

Selection of the participants that will participate in the training in March 2021

Postponed Due to Pandemic Situation of  COVID 19 

December 2020

Signing contracts with participants of the training and the organisations

Postponed Due to Pandemic Situation of COVID 19
New dates March 2021 

January 2021

Create a group on Facebook with all the representatives of the participating organizations in the project for an easier exchange of ideas or questions about the program. That will help for better communication, through sharing thoughts and actions.

Webinar about the project for participants

Detailed InfoPack that will be send to all participants through Facebook Webpage and also through their emails.

Postponed Due to Pandemic Situation of COVID 19
New dates March 2021 

Jan/February 2021

Do research to identify cases of self-awareness in each partner country (what do they believe, examples etc).

Postponed Due to Pandemic Situation of COVID 19
New dates April - May 2021 

New Dates: May/June 2021

Publish to the Webpage of the Organisation of Cyprus all the information and material developed through the project.

New Dates: July  2021

Training Course (6 days excluding travelling dates) in Cyprus. From 4 till 11 of July 2021.

July 2021

Article preparation from groups by each country, writing about their work and what they have done during the whole program (from October 2020 till the end of April 2021). Articles will be published to our webpage

July 2021

Evaluation of the program from the organisations.

August 2021

Final modification of the activities of the training on our webpage.

August 2021

An electronic book with all results of the project is going to published on our webpage.

August 2021

Dissemination of results. All organisations will need to come in contact with their local area so all results of our project to be published and disseminated to a lot of people .

August 2021

Create a video about the whole project. The video will be prepared by the group from Cyprus.