BE YOURSELF, NOT OTHERS

May – 2018 in the city of Balıkesir, Turkey

Project title: Be yourself, not the others.

Project reference number: 2017 – 1 – TR01 – KA105 – 039007

Project Partners:

– Balıkesir University (Turkey – coordinating institution)

– Associazione Culturale Eufemia (Italy)

– Espacio Tecnico de Innovacion y Formacion (Spain)

– Civic Organization “Development and Initiative” (Ukraine)

– Euro Education Federation (Romania)

– Global Union for Innovations, Development and Education (Bulgaria)

Choosing participants:

– Each partner organization will choose 7 participants

– One of the seven participants will be the group leader

– Participants should be aged between 18 – 29 (only the group leader can be chosen older than 29 – – EU regulations for youth projects funded by the EU)

– 4 participants from each partner organization will be chosen of young people from culturally or socially disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g. poor families or families living in rural areas or ghettos, etc. ).

– 1 participant from each partner organization should be someone with special needs (e.g. someone mentally or physically disabled or someone in other kinds of needs, etc.) and 1 participant should be accompanying her/him.

– Gender balance should also be taken into consideration while choosing participants.

Travel expenses:

– Each participant will be provided with a certain amount of budget depending on the country he/she resides. The amount is pre-determined and for our project it is as follows:

Spain (360 Euros for each participant) – 2520 total

Italy (275 Euros for each participant) – 1925 total

Romania (275 Euros for each participant) – 1925 total

Bulgaria (275 Euros for each participant) – 1925 total

Ukraine (275 Euros for each participant) – 1925 total

The money for travel expenses will be sent to the bank accounts of the related organizations via bank transfer. So, the partner organizations should send their accounts in detail to me (Dincher) 🙂 via e-mail. And the money will be sent to you then.

Accommodation and food:

– Participants will be hosted by Balıkesir University in congress centre and they will be provided with free accommodation and food during the whole project week.

Project Summary

Our project is a youth exchange project that will take place in Balıkesir with the participation of 42 young people. As the main theme of our project is (youth and body dissatisfaction) closely related to world youth, our target group is all young people.

Since 2005, our staff, who have been involved in many projects and partnerships in fields such as youth, vocational education, intercultural learning, European Voluntary Service and European awareness, have recently investigated the problem of body dissatisfaction and intervention in the body and observed very striking findings. According to this, in our century, the ideal understanding of the body originating from the West creates a pressure with long lasting effects especially on young people, it can lead them to dissatisfaction with their bodies and even to “hate themselves”. Doctors often refer to this as “body image disorder”, which is often accompanied by physical and mental health impairment behaviour such as tight dieting, fasting, anorexia nervosa, and so on. The most frequently encountered ones are the aesthetic surgeries, body tattoos, beauty products, slimming and body building centres, textile and fashion products.

Research on widespread body image disturbance among young people clearly shows the seriousness of the situation. This is also evident in the project questionnaires carried out by our International centre.

(Http://www.balikesir.edu.tr/bau_yonetim/yukleme/birim/49/report%20for%20web.pdf)

There are a number of empirical research findings that explore how the concept of sexism and racial beauty produced by the West and marketed to the whole world affects young people in non-Western societies. For example, the results of research on Angela Mc Cracken (2007) on Mexican native youth give an idea. Mexican young men and women are making a special effort to avoid the appearance of locality; For this, men use exercise to expand their breasts, prolong their size, have a

stronger body, and at the same time use athletic clothes and accessories. And young women prefer more skinny types of fashion.

Based on this brief summary of our information, our project aims to:

1) Get rid of the effects of impressive, incentive advertising.

2) Identifying common body image and dissatisfaction problems among young people, developing awareness of what practices they are practicing and how these practices affect young people.

3) To produce solutions to the problems of the body image and dissatisfaction among the youth, to take care of young people and to share them with other young people.

4) Developing the ability to establish relations between capitalism, the beauty industry and the media, with an understanding of ideal body and beauty.

5) To enable young people to know the value judgments of young people through intercultural learning and to contribute to the formation of the European consciousness.

To achieve these goals, our project envisions various workshops, drama, exhibitions, presentations, and discussion activities on the physical image and dissatisfaction and interventions of the body using experimental learning techniques with active participation of the direct participants and their effects on the physical and mental lives of young people.

It is expected that the effects of our project on participants will be as follows.

1) Be conscious about the inner image and the importance of development as much as the external image in the context of the “Look at yourself” teaching.

2) To develop insights into the concepts of body image and dissatisfaction, the causes and consequences of practices based on these phenomena (body intervention)

3) Be aware of the close ties between good sense of the body and social culture

4) Developing the ability to establish relations between capitalism, the beauty industry and the media, with an understanding of ideal body and beauty.

5) To develop the ability to resist ideal body and beauty propagandas and make their own choices.

6) Develop media literacy skills related to ideal / beautiful body propaganda

7) Developing self-expression and teamwork skills.

It is also expected that the project will contribute to the development of ideas, materials and solution proposals to help young people achieve a healthy and quality lifestyle, and to promote international and European awareness practices that threaten young people’s health and effective alternative methods.