15 Apr EPC Lead Partner of the Erasmus+ EM-CITY Project!
The EM-CITY’s project kick-off in presence in Vicenza on April 13th !
In the European Year of Youth, EPC is coordinating the Erasmus+ Youth EM CITY project in a partnership with non-profit organisations and research institutions from Greece, Cyprus and Turkey.
The project EM CITY: Emergency Management by Communicates Interaction Through Youth, operates in a global context that is unfortunately getting us accustomed to handling climate, health and humanitarian emergencies with a frequency and scale never experienced before. Among the main obstacles encountered dealing with different emergency situations there are a limited communication among the different groups of people who lives in the same area and the difference in how these groups have access to key information. Consider how the digital divide accelerated during the recent COVID lockdown, isolating those who did not have Internet access or lacked the necessary skills from those who were able to use it regularly. This is the case of young or elderly people from communities culturally different from the main one who may be penalised or even ignored in emergency management situations. By their very nature, young people are the most dynamic groups, the ones that has already developed digital skills and that, at territorial level, in an emergency situation, could have the capacity to assume a key role as a link between the various groups of which a community is composed. However, to make this possible, proper training is needed and this is exactly what the EM City project aims to do: promote social inclusion among different groups in local communities in case of emergencies recognizing that young people, if properly sensitize and trained, can play a pivotal role in facilitating these interactions.
Therefore, the project aims to achieve the following main objectives:
– To promote interactive processes between local authorities, civil protection workers, community representatives, young people and other people who can be helpful during emergency management situations;
– To enhance the role of youth as “interactive bridges” between civil protection operators, local authorities, the citizens of the main local language and culture and culturally and linguistically diverse communities in a given area;
– To promote civic inclusion, active citizenship, civil protection values, emergency management skills among the young people making up the local communities;
– To promote awareness with respect to communication processes in emergencies, between community stakeholders (and the different linguistic and cultural groups present), civil protection operators and the local community;
Follow project activities on the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/emcitycommunity