Youth Exchange

14 - 25 October 2024

Vatra Dornei, Romania

“EcoXplorer” is an Erasmus+ international youth exchange project,
with partners from 5 European countries:
Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, and Italy.

It has a period of 10 days of activities
between 15 - 24 October, 2024 (14 - 25 October with travel days included).

The location for activities is Vatra Dornei, a small picturesque mountain resort
in the Carpathian Mountains of Northern Romania.

The group present at activities will consist of 40 young people.

We need 7 young participants (18-30 years old)

and 1 group leader (above 18, no superior age limit)

from each of the mentioned countries, 8 persons per country.

Through the "EcoXplorer" project, we aim to address ecological issues facing our communities and contribute to their resolution on a global scale.

We intend to tackle this theme with active involvement of young people, considering their potential to be the driving force of change in society and make significant contributions to environmental protection.

Project objectives:

O1. Facilitate the exchange of best practices among the 40 participants during a 10-day program, generating an Eco instruction guide useful for daily use. This guide will be distributed online to other young people in the community for 4 months after the activities.

O2. Motivate the 40 participants to engage in at least one environmental protection action by December 31, 2024.

O3. Create 6 promotional films promoting an eco-friendly mindset and disseminate them to a minimum of 2000 people by December 31, 2024.

The objective of the "EcoXplorer" project is to facilitate the exchange of best practices in the ecological field and identify eco-friendly habits, which will be subsequently adopted by the 50 participants in their daily lives, and disseminate the information and solutions discovered to other active young people from the communities involved in the project.

Activity schedule

Day 0 14 Oct

Arrival day to Cluj Napoca

Day 1 15 Oct

Ice Braker

Get to Know each Other

Group Contract

Erasmus+&Youthpass presentation

Day 2 16 Oct

Teambuilding

Research session "European Eco Problems "

Workshop: ”What are the authorities doing, what can be done, what can I do?”

Day 3 17 Oct

Workshop: Green Corner EcoXplorer

Debating Eco Theatre

Eco-Tedx

Day 4 18 Oct

Practical greening workshop "EcoXplorer"

Workshop planting trees "EcoXplorer"

Day 5 19 Oct

Recycled Art Workshop: "EcoXplorer Museum"

"Interactive Ecological Map" workshop

Day 6 20 Oct

"EcoXplorer" Public Cafe

Workshop: Creation of flashmobs to raise awareness of public opinion on the ecological problems of the planet

Day 7 21 Oct

Presentation of flashmobs in Vatra Dornei

Street Inteview: Creating interviews with locals from Vatra Dornei regarding ecological problems and the solutions they propose

Day 8 22 Oct

Work in a team to create 5 videos to motivate young people to become Eco Friendly

Day 9 23 Oct

Workshop: creation of the eco friendly guide

Research session in national groups: "Eco acting" young people will look for an ecological activity in their native community or initiate one

Day 10 24 Oct

YouthPass

Disemiantion Strategy

Final Evaluation

Day 11 25 Oct

Departure day from Cluj Napoca

*The schedule could suffer changes depending on the weather,
flow of the learning process and the availability of our local transport.

Travel

You will arrive to Cluj-Napoca (or simply Cluj, as most Romanians prefer to call it) at the Avram Iancu Airport (CLJ). It is the only airport in the city and the biggest one in Transylvania: http://airportcluj.ro/

Getting to city center by public transport: Bus line 5 runs between the airport and the city of Cluj-Napoca. The trolleybus departs approximately every 10 minutes between 05:00 a.m. and 22:00 p.m., on weekends and evenings every 15 to 20 minutes.

The airport bus stop is located 200 meters away from the terminal, along the ‘Strada Traian Vuia’. It is a short walk from the terminal, you first have to go to the main road and then to the right.

In the center of Cluj-Napoca, you can get off at the stops Constanta (Regionale CFR), Sora and Central. The bus ride to one of these bus stops takes an average of 25 minutes. The first and final stop of bus line 5 is known as Fierul and can be found in the street ‘Strada Cuza Voda’.

Tickets are available at vending machines and service counters near the bus stops. Keep in mind, it is not possible to buy a ticket from the bus driver. The price is 3.00 RON for a single ride and 6.00 RON for two journeys.

As well, you can take bus line 8 for travelling between the airport and downtown Cluj-Napoca, the bus runs about every 20 minutes and only from Monday till Friday.

Schedule for line 5: http://ctpcj.ro/index.php/en/timetables/urban-lines/linia-5

Schedule for line 8: http://ctpcj.ro/index.php/en/timetables/urban-lines/line8

Advice: Don’t change too much money at the airport because of the bad rates compared to the exchange offices downtown (we recommend 5-10 euro maximum).

The Romanian currency is leu (RON): 1 Euro = 4.97 RON ( July 2024 )
If you choose to take a taxi, it will be your own expense since taxi fares are not refunded according to Erasmus+ rules, having available public transport.

Arrival: The arrival day to Cluj-Napoca is 14 October 2024, max. at 18:00 in the evening.
If for some reasons you cannot find tickets with arrival hours in the morning or in the
afternoon, please email us and we will find a solution for you.
The arrival hour is set this way because we need to leave for Vatra Dornei in the evening of 14th, by bus, possibly arriving after midnight on 15 October 2024.

You can also arrive 1 or 2 days earlier to visit Cluj-Napoca, on your own expense.

The meeting point in Cluj-Napoca for the departure to Vatra Dornei will be at an accessible location and communicated after all trip details are settled.

Departure: The departure to Cluj-Napoca will be on 25 of October around midnight, so make sure you have flights that leave on 25 of October at 6:00 a.m. the earliest, because we will travel through the night to reach Cluj-Napoca early on 25 of October.

You can also stay in Cluj-Napoca 1-2 days after the project and visit it on your own expense.

Here are some online resources to guide you if you wish to spend some additional time
in Cluj-Napoca before/after the project:

https://www.romanianfriend.com/attractions/cluj-napoca-what-to-do-guide

http://www.visitclujnapoca.ro/en/

https://wikitravel.org/en/Cluj-Napoca

For more general details about Romania you can check out the following links:

https://www.facebook.com/romaniatravel.ro/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania

http://www.romaniatourism.com/

Green travel

To qualify for Green Travel Support, you must use sustainable means of transport for most of your journey, such as bus, train, or carpooling (both outward and return).

We have implemented Green Travel for neighboring and closer countries, namely Bulgaria, and Poland. We strongly recommend that participants from these countries opt for green transportation. Additionally, we could consider reimbursing one night of accommodation at the hostel for participants traveling multiple days.

For participants from other countries who wish to travel using Green Travel, we are open to discussing and analyzing this proposal further.

You need to send us by email (or bring with you) all original receipts, invoices, e-tickets and boarding passes!

We strongly encourage you to buy flights that offer the possibility of online check-in so that you can give us the return boarding passes as well, without sending them to us by post when you return home. If your airline does not offer such possibility, you will have to to send us the boarding passes by post after the project.

It is very important to have all your travel and financial documents with you, otherwise the reimbursement is not possible. Reimbursement will be done by bank transfer in the account of your sending organization, according to the rules of Erasmus+.

The amounts of money for travel, per person, per country are as following:

211 €

309 €

Budget for GREEN TRAVEL, per person:

285 €

*We do not cover taxi or private car transport costs.

The location

We chose a guesthouse in the outskirts of Vatra Dornei town that is close to nature,

but also benefits fully from the comfort of modern life.

Here are links to the website and Facebook page of the guesthouse:

https://www.facebook.com/siady.pensiunea

https://hotelguru.ro/casa-siady-vatra-dornei

We will accommodate 2-3 persons in one room, maybe some rooms will host a max. of 4 persons. Each room has its own bathroom and toiletries.

Some rooms are designed as matrimonial, thus two persons might share one bed, but rest assured that the beds are big enough and each of you will have his/ her own blanket.

There is mobile signal and wi-fi connection throughout the establishment.

We will have our meals at the guesthouse restaurant, serving fresh eco products from country side.

Attention: We will be in the middle of the Romanian mountain countryside in a place that serves traditional Romanian food. For vegetarians / vegans might be hard to adapt because here most meals contain meat and cheese products.
We will surely have vegetarian / vegan options, but please come with an open mind because you may need to eat a lot of potatoes, bread and polenta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polenta).

We will have many typical Romanian meals with meat, cheese, eggs, because most of the products served are from ecological farms and households in the area, but will make sure to have suitable options for all dietary regimes.

If you wish to learn more about the town and the region you can check the following links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatra_Dornei - town of Vatra Dornei

https://taradornelor.ro/en/ - the region

What to bring

Typical food and drinks from your countries. During the youth exchange we will have traditional evenings and basically each evening will belong to a different country. You can bring national costumes, decorations, leaflets, food, sweets, drinks and much more. There might be the possibility to cook something using the kitchen of the establishment.

Unfortunately, we don’t have budget to reimburse the expenses made for the things you are bringing, but try to be creative and funny.

You can show videos, photos, sing songs and dance traditional dances from your countries. We are counting on you to make these evenings as interesting as possible and promise to help you in any way we can.

Research on healthy lifestyle, life satisfaction and well being issues faced by youngsters from your communities. It would be wise to look into the matter before coming to Romania and during the work sessions explain and give practical examples from your countries.

Each national team should have at least 2 laptops and 2 good photo cameras/ phones.

In October it can be cold in the mountains. Prepare for temperatures between
15 Celsius (or higher) during the day and 5 Celsius (or lower) during nights. It is recommended to bring warm clothes in case it rains or you wish to stay outside during evenings, when it gets chilly. It is not uncommon to see snow in October, especially in the mountains around.

Bed linen and toiletries are provided by the guesthouse, however we encourage you to bring your own towels and whatever you need for the shower, so that you feel comfortable.

We will provide water daily. Please bring your own water recipients to avoid use of plastic glasses.

We will have available the emergency medical kit. However we encourage you to bring the remedies you are used to for most common situations such as fever, headaches, stomach aches and more specific needs, if it is the case.

Although we can’t reimburse the cost of health insurances, it is mandatory to have a valid health insurance covering COVID-19 cases as well. As Romania is an EU member, an insurance should be cheap and easy to make. If you have a European Health Card, please bring it with you, it is valid in our hospital system.

About organizers

The Pro Bono Youth Club Association is a newly established organization that was opened in January 2023. PRO BONO YOUTH CLUB Association is a non-governmental organization, a non-profit professional association, non-patrimonial, independent, and with legal personality. It operates in accordance with the country's laws and its statutes, with headquarters located in Suceava, Romania.

The main goal of PRO BONO YOUTH CLUB Association is to promote and develop education, social values, and encourage civic participation among young people in Romania. To achieve this goal, the Association has the following objectives:

a) Motivating and increasing the mobility of young people;

b) Ensuring the exchange of positive experiences among young people to enhance their cultural and informational levels;

c) Promoting cooperation between states, tolerance, and deepening the idea of European unity;

d) Stimulating cultural activities and implementing educational programs that represent the social values of Romania and the European Union;

f) Collaborating with other national and international institutions or organizations that align with the objectives and ideals of PRO BONO YOUTH CLUB;

g) Providing support to members for their participation in various schools, projects, and training courses in fields of interest to the association;

h) Organizing seminars, workshops, conferences, and various events.

Our association is committed to fostering positive youth development, promoting cross-cultural exchange, and supporting activities that contribute to the personal and professional growth of young people in Romania.

The hosting partner in Romania is D.G.T. Association, founder of D.G.T. (Do Great Things) Network. Their mission focuses on national and international networking among young people, students, trainers and teachers of different nationalities, cultures and backgrounds.

Facebook DGT: https://www.facebook.com/DoGreatThingsNetwork/

Contact:

DUMITRU Sorbala

probonoyouthclub@gmail.com
+40 755 587 169

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