Our summer camp promotes civic education among young people through involvement, dialogue, and volunteering in their local area. We aim for the local initiative group development and its involvement in social, environmental, and public policy projects.
The youths, belonging to both rural and urban areas, will become active citizens, who will be able in the future to mobilize their colleagues and friends to remove the existing interethnic barriers in the communities where they come from.

The project will take place in Gurghiu Valley, Mureș county, central Romania

The project involves children from Gurghiu Valley, a small geographic area where are numerous villages, including Gurghiu(1.800 inhabitants) and the city of Reghin (30.000 inhabitants). In this area four major ethnic groups coexist Romanians (53%), Hungarians (39%), and Roma(7%). Creating a camp for children from different backgrounds and ethnicities will have a major impact at the local level, through the extra knowledge it brings to the new generations. By educating and involving children in projects of ecology and civic involvement, we will also reach their parents, building brick by brick a more involved and informed society. We want children to be aware that the most important local resource is the people, and together they can help develop an active and sustainable community.

The project is addressed to 60 children aged between 11-14 years and 15-18 years, from Gurghiu commune and Reghin city, and three ethnicities. We want to reduce the gap between the education of children from urban and rural areas, to bring together all ethnicities, with children working together for a balanced future community, in which members collaborate and support each other, and find new income-generating alternatives without having to emigrate.
Most members of the rural community are engaged in animal husbandry and subsistence agriculture, this area being a hill and mountain, large-scale agriculture can not be done.

PART 1 - Preparation ( 11/20–06/21)
- permanent activities: management, monitoring of appearances in the local and online press and evaluation
- development of community information materials and the announcement of the event
- establishing educational activities together with the specialists
- enrollment of children in the project
PART 2 – Summer Camps ( 60 children, 10 specialists, 5 team members) in Lapușna, Gurghiu Valley
Camp 1: age 11-14 years (06/21) – 5 days, 30 children, 10 specialists, 5 team members
Camp 2: age 15-18 years(07/21) – 5 days, 30 children 10 specialists, 5 team members
PART 3: - Evaluation (08-09/21)
- a press release with a brief presentation of the project and the resulting materials
- final evaluation of the project and submission of the final report

In the future we want our group to form a local association that organizes an annual civic education camp and numerous non-formal educational projects, for children belonging to Gurghiu Valley communities. We also want to include the children participating in the camp, in local civic initiative projects, volunteer projects or to offer them the leverage and support necessary to put their own ideas into practice.
The existence of an annual civic education camp will have beneficial effects on both the team and the community by coagulating it and the existence of collaboration for the common good. We must keep in mind that tomorrow's adults are today's children and what they will learn in the institutionalized or non-formal setting will affect future society.

In our small community, everyone knows each other, but the members do not have the knowledge to collaborate for the same common good. Continuous collaboration between members of the local community and political actors and local decision-makers are part of the democratic process. The involvement in the decision-making process is part of the manifestation elements of citizen involvement, the result in education for active citizenship.
Our project wants to teach youths about democracy through principles and values as freedom of speech, learning by doing, ‘see something, do something’ model. And the most important thing is that they will learn to think as a whole and to protect their common good. But until they learn this information, it will be necessary for them to know their rights.

We want to be as involved in the community as possible in the future, to facilitate good collaboration between residents, public authorities and specialists, in order to lay the foundations for sustainable development of the area, in which those directly involved will be more informed and open to new approaches.
We want to do all these things in an organized framework, with clear directions for development and action. So far, we have carried out actions according to the immediate needs in the community. We developed a fundraising project, as volunteers, together with community members, local authorities and NGOs, whom we managed to renovate the kindergarten and partially the school, buy new furniture for the kindergarten and educational materials and books.

Coordination: 8.000€
Personnel costs for camps: 10.000€
Camp Costs (accommodation and meals) : 19.000€
Audio-video Rentals and Didactic Materials: 3000€
Transport: 3000€
Graphic materials: 5.000€
Office expenses: 2000€

We would like to get constructive feedback and advice, with direct observations on our project, in order to improve and develop our idea.