Visit at the Otepää municipality

On 19.04.2011 our team consisted of Adriana, Kuba and Hakki. We went to the Otepää municipality to present there the Youth in Action programme. First we had one hour to rehearse our presentation and videos and to check whether all the technical stuff is working. Then came 11.00 AM and all the local representatives – around seven people, entered the room. We welcomed them and introduced ourselves shortly. Then we asked them to do the same and also to write down their names and job titles; this way we knew who were they. We also asked them to explain us what they do for the local youth; we learnt that they have a youth center and that they do different types of youth work. Then we told them how the presentation will go – first we will make an overview of YiA, then we will give examples and then we will try to generate ideas together with them. Our goal was to use the presentation as a trigger for a discussion about what projects can be done for the local youth.

We spoke about each of the five YiA subprograms/actions; our focus was mainly on Youth Democracy, Youth Seminars and Youth Initiatives but we covered all of them by giving all the needed general information. Then we asked them if they have any questions about each of the subprograms and provided them with the answers they needed. Our presentation was quite interactive so when we spoke about the benefits from YiA for both the youth and the municipality we asked them to talk about it first and only afterwards we laid out our vision on the topic. Then came the time to discuss actual project ideas and left the municipality officials to discuss the topic. In the end, they wrote down their project ideas and we also shared with them our project ideas.

English language was an obstacle to some of them but this was not a problem because the deputy mayor was quite helpful and did the translation for us whenever needed. It is interesting to mention that the mayor also came to our presentation. This was a very helpful experience for both parties – us and the municipality officials because it broadened our horizons.