EMAS Conference 2004: Proposed issues (Germany)

Germany would like to talk about a two weeks leaders' course in Finland offered every year, principles of youth exchange projects, training of Award youth reporters, migration to GNU/Linux and first steps of the Award in Poland.

1. Award Summer School (together with Finland)

The Award is developing rather quickly and a main concern of Finland and Germany is to support this tendency by new and enhanced methods of leaders' training.

Together both countries are developing a joint two-weeks-course, which will be run yearly at Mikkeli Polytechnics in Finland. Details are still to be developed, but some elements could probably be

• Award programme and outdoor education

• Fundamentals and elements of Award leadership

• Hiking in the wilderness of Finland.

A draft programme of the course will be presented in Luxembourg.

2. Principles of youth exchange projects

As more and more youth exchange projects are offered, important principles of the Award philosophy and its system should be remembered and taken into account when planning and preparing such offers.

We believe that these five points are the most important ones:

• Exchange projects should have either one Award section (in this paper called activity exchanges) or training of young leaders (seminar) as a main focus of activities.

• Activity exchanges should be offered by Operating Authorities from two or more countries (“the Award ist not an organization”), not by National Award Authorities and international seminars for young leaders should be carried out by National Award Authorities. In both cases the two (or more) countries involved should work closely together regarding the organization and planning of the exchange .

• Activity exchanges should be organized and managed by participants as far as possible and should offer a challenge to the young people (“no youth tourism”).

• Activity exchanges should be open for a broader age range and not just involve young adults (“open for all”).

• Planning of activity exchanges should start two years ahead.

A detailed paper will be presented in Luxembourg.

3. Training of Award Youth Reportes

The Award is about the challange of the individual and Award presentations in magazines or in the Internet should show, what exactly “challenge” means for individual participants.

To help Award groups producing adequate stories, in Germany a “Youth Reporter Course” was developed, in which participants and young leaders learn how to make interviews, to write portraits and reports, to take pictures and to use our content management system to finally publish them.

After two national courses a first international one is offered from 15.06.2005 – 19.06.2005 in Osterburken, Germany. Participation is free of charge, minimum age is 16, application deadline is 15.12.2004.

A detailed programme will be presented in Luxembourg.

4. Award Server and Linux Migration

Linux and Open Source Software in general can help saving costs, inreasing savety and securing legality (no pirate copies needed) in youth work as well as in all other areas. But migration is not easy at all, because a lot of applications are involved.

With international (“special project”) and national support the German NAA fully migrated its IT (Office and Web) to Linux and Open Source Software. Our own “Award Server” runs the

• Award Magazine CMS (Zope/Plone/OpenOffice);

• “Electronic Record Book” database for Operating Authoities;

• E-mail and groupware services (SUSE Linux Openexchange Server) used by office staff and council members.

After two national workshops about GNU/Linux in education and youth work have been carried out by the German Award on a national scale, an international one is offered from 16.06.2005 – 18.06.2005 in Osterburken, Germany. Participation is free of charge, minimum age is 18, application deadline is 15.12.2004.

5. First steps of the Award in Poland

Marta Godicz will give a short report of her activties.