| Profile |
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| Sunday, 14 June 2009 18:17 |
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I. MAIN OBJECTIVES KNOW AND CAN Association is NGO in private benefit set up in March 2007 in Sofia. Its goals are:
II. OBJECT OF ACTIVITY The object of activities of the Association is:
ІІІ. TRAINING SEMINARS Know and Can Association performs a range of informal courses that are related to the non-traditional education. The main objectives of the courses are to raise the qualification, to create skills, to improve knowledge and improve skills in order to help people to be competitive, aware and bright ones. Informal courses and programs: Debating
Team working Conflicts decision Leading methods and styles
Psychometric tests and job interviews
Realizing and managing successful projects
Successful self – realization program for young people The aim of this non-formal course is to help young people to gain knowledge, social skills and virtues in order to facilitate them to adapt to the higher and higher demands of social and educational spheres. This, consequently, will surely lead to their better adaptation and realization in real life as it develops young people’s mental and emotional intelligence. The idea of working out this program came because of the innumerable questions, mainly by young people, on the lack of places where to meet, communicate and share interests with other young people having high IQ potential; on the need to receive and reveal additional skills that traditional educational systems cannot present; on how to spend their leisure time in interesting and useful way; and most of all – how to reduce the lack of readiness for realization of young people who has already graduated high schools or universities. So, the sub modules in the program include:
Contents of the program This program includes theory, interactive methods for building up habits and skills, communicative and intellectual problems and exercises, psychometrical, number and picture tests, exercises for developing memory, logic and perception, intellectual games and puzzles, IQ tests. The program is predicted to be held in 30-34 activities, each one with duration of 90 minutes. The program is recommended to high school students and young adults. The program can also be corrected on the number of activities according to the needs of the participants.
Intellectual skills development program Aims:
Program for professional orientation and consultation The aims of the program are to stimulate young people and students’ reasoning on their personal development and perspectives in the future and to assist them in their professional choice. The program is recommended to high school students, youths who have just graduated universities and people who want to change their present job, in order to help them to find their realization it the labour market according to their wills, abilities and expectations; to think on their work not only as a realization of their ambitions for success, reaching the material dimensions and aims or a way of living, but as well as to try to find themselves in each activity they take on. The program includes finding out:
IV. ASSOSSIATION TEAM/STAFF KNOW AND CAN team includes people who are specialists in the following spheres – education of youths and adults, finances and economics, pedagogies and psychology, public administration, administration and government. The members of the Know and Can team are enthusiastic, ambitious, highly-educated and well-trained with interests in many fields. They are hard-working, punctual, and tolerant and last but not least they have great desire for working in international teams. All of the members of the staff have attended specialized trainings on different courses and programs in Bulgaria and abroad – leadership skills and debating, civil education, social psychological trainings, developing intellectual programs for children and youths and others connected with education and trainings. The achieved knowledge from the international specialties is applied in the projects of the Association. V. PROJECTS THEY ARE PERSONALITIES TOO The project is under the program Youth in Action, Youth Initiatives. The project aims in a period of 5 months to increase the level of information of 120 students aged 16-18 and to enrich their knowledge on the themes of psychoactive substances and HIV virus; to eliminate the dominating mistaken notions and the incorrect, inadequate and intolerant attitude proceeding from them towards people dependent on psychoactive substances and people with HIV; to declare our wish for changing the present situation of non-understanding and not knowing the specific characteristics of HIV problem; to show opportunities for reintegrating in society of addicted and infected people as people with equal chances who have rights, feelings and emotions just like healthy people; to build up skills in young people for health protection and prevention of risky sexual behaviour. By applying of interactive art techniques used in the already set up youth-discussion club ‘Naturally’ to the Know and Can Association young people will come close to the situations, in which people with HIV are put in. Forum theatre enables people to act their real life problems and give suggestions for their decision. It is a proved method for increasing the sensibility to definite problems, developing community, in children’s and youths’ education, in individual development. Some of the main activities included in the project are: writing of a script for a theatrical production on the problem of “HIV”; presenting the theatrical production to the youths; preparing of informational materials on the topic about HIV; making informational video clips performing the problem in an interesting and reachable way; formation and division of the target group into 9 small groups in three different schools; giving presentations; taking youth discussions on the problem of AIDS and addictions; announcement of a competition on writing an essay on the theme “I am a personality, too”; a competition on poster designs on the main problem; filling in questionnaires that include questions about the HIV, the drug addictions, young people’s attitude towards the problem of AIDS and addictions; producing flyers, brochures, posters and giving them to the young people who take part in the project. BULGARIAN YOUTHS – THE NEW EUROPEAN LEADERS The project is under the Program for Youth Activities, Subprogram – Everyone is a personality. The project aims at within four months to train young leaders in respect to investigate and work out projects on European Programs, debating, conflicts and conflicts decisions, developing of creative and intellectual potential, improving of personal qualities. Applying the principles and methods of non-formal education will help young people in their interests, necessities, successful decisions of future problems and causes, giving meaning of free time, finding a suitable job, correspondent to their qualification and abilities. The result of the project will be the turning of youths into a key factor in Euro integration processes in Bulgaria. By pointing young people to express themselves and build personal qualities, the project will help young people to work in cooperation and take responsibilities. There will be trained 30 youths in three 3-days theoretical seminars, including: conflicts decisions, psychometric tests and job applying, debating and project writing. These 3-days seminars will be followed by one 3-day seminars with practical purpose, including: debating contest, projects promotion, causes and tests decisions. The gained results and actual information about the target group will be published on the Znam i Moga internet site. KNOW AND CAN CLUBS The project is under Operational Program Human Resources Development, Priority axis 4 - Improving the access to education and training. Know and Can Association is established in order to help young people and students get involved into the field of informal education. To respond to students and youths’ needs for extra activities that can reveal their potential and intellectual skills, the Association decided to work out a project based on the intellectual games and activities. The project “Know and Can Club” reveals different opportunities for young people to take part in extra educational process without considering it as something boring or compulsory. The project aims at a period of 15 months to teach students at school age in active and single-handed studying, to make them want to take part in school life and activities and to help them turn into creative and responsible people who are able to make decisions about their future and realization responding to their needs and wills. The project will be held in cooperation with high schools with the help of headmasters, the pedagogical advisor, teachers and trainers. When the school teams are formed they will start working on different modules included in the program of the project. The project includes 30 activities for students in elementary school and 34 ones for the students in high-school age. The activities are going to be held in the schools’ buildings and after the classes in fixed days. To make it more creative and interesting, Know and Can Club intends to carry out competitions where the students will be able to show their new skills and gained knowledge and it will help them feel confident and successful. The competitions will be within the different schools as well as in schools themselves. In general, the program of the project aims to increase students’ interests and motivation to the educational process by the out-school activities, to stimulate their personal capacity and virtues for successful choice of future realization, to form out in students active positions and attitude towards school itself and school life as a whole. We believe we can achieve the project’s aims because of our experience in informal education as well as our experience in dealing with youths and students at different school age. TOURISM – NEW KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE The project is under Lifelong Learning Program – Leonardo da Vinchi, Mobility The project aims at answering the need of improving the professional skills of 15 young people newly graduated in the sphere of tourism, who are on the labour market and who intend to find their future realization in tourism, mainly in the sphere of restaurants business. Nowadays Bulgaria is still falling behind from a number of tendencies of the competitive, dynamic and globalizing European market of tourist services. Participants in the training will have the opportunity to improve their knowledge and skills in a country with leading European practices in this field. Know and can Association, the initiator of the present project and guarantee for the system of valuation of the project and for the training of every single participant, in cooperation with the other partners of the project from Bulgaria and Italy, intend to send 15 unemployed young people, newly graduated in the sphere of tourism, in Italian restaurants with the following training purposes: to get acquainted with the working system in the sphere of restaurants business in Italy; to have close contact with the European experience in a country with century old traditions in culinary art and tourism, a country where cuisine is an attractive tourist product; to improve their own competences in one new intercultural surroundings. The result of this training will be multiplication, dissemination of the participants’ acquired knowledge and practical skills in the professional circles of the Bulgarian restaurants business and tourism, where there is a strong lack of staff with new thinking and new professional culture. The planned duration of the project is 21 weeks, in which the stage of the preliminary preparation is included. |