Coming Back to Roots The people who forget their own tradition are doomed to disappear for good. Traditions represent the whole history of peoples preserving their lifestyle along the years, their customs and crafts, expressing their joys and sufferings, their patriotism, their collective hopes and dreams of freedom and light in the shape of buildings or in the artistic, sewn, woven, painted or carved images. One of the main difficulties of today’s youth in the region of Oltenia and more exactly in its poorest counties such as Dolj county and Olt county, which are poor not only from the financial point of view, but also from its tradition preservation’s point of view, is the lack of authentic role models which should be well-known, love, cherished and promoted. Just like these former counties, the city of Oreahovo and its surroundings are poor in real traditional models. All these lead to an almost inexistent form of traditional tourism (agro-tourism) not only in the south of Oltenia but also in the region of Vratsa, a lack of potential which neither the local people nor the authorities have become aware of so far. Consequently, there are no jobs available for the young people passionate about customs and traditions who could cultivate their talents, knowledge, skills and could contribute to the development of a valuable traditional tourism which might promote their native region and attract the funding essential to their community. The aim of this project is to enhance the value of the youth’s creative and entrepreneurial potential from the partner organisations in the domain of traditional tourism, by actively participating to the socio-cultural life of the community, and at the same time to promote the traditional customs and crafts in the two neighbouring regions: Oltenia and Oreahovo. General objectives: • The active participation of Romanian and Bulgarian young people in the activities suggested in this project by getting involved in the socio-cultural life of their own community, in the preservation and conservation of particular traditions, as well as in the improvement and the development of traditional tourism which might lead to a higher living standard through the reduction of financial problems and unemployment amongst the youth. • The promotion of folklore, customs, traditions and crafts, of creativity and originality amongst the youth in Craiova and Oreahovo. • The attraction of an important number of young people to the discovery of local traditions, to their own professional development in the domains of ethnography or traditional tourism and to the perspective of becoming young entrepreneurs. Specific objectives • The initiation and training of 30 Romanian and Bulgarian young people in the domain of ethnography by taking part in classes of traditional architecture, traditional household, traditional crafts and traditional tourism. • The development of the Romanian and Bulgarian young people’s entrepreneurial spirit in the domain of traditional tourism • The development of different skills and abilities such as teamwork, negotiation, organization, mobilization and creativity. Activities • The organization of the Romanian and Bulgarian groups; • The Preparation visit; • The organization of the exchange activity; • The launching of the project; • The exchange activity; • The making of the evaluation report; • The dissemination of the project results. During this project the young people will develop their personal, group and institutional communication abilities, their teamwork spirit, the power of negotiation, their tolerance and mutual respect, the skills of rhetoric, organization and management (material, human, financial, time, risk and conflict management) and the ability of transmitting information to different public categories (such as public institutions, mass media, the general public). The methods used will be: brainstorming, debates, dialogue, interviews, evaluation, self-evaluation, ordering and defining exercises, open space games, creativity games, (small and big) group work. These methods will contribute to the improvement of the learning process and they will have an active-participatory approach as all the 30 young people will have an active role in the project. The project ‘Coming back to roots’ is a bilateral mobility project whose partners are CREEAZA ROMANSTE Association from Craiova, Romania and ‘Nadejda 1871’ Narodno Citaliste from Oreahovo, Bulgaria. The project will last for 9 months (from 01//2014 to 01/06/2015). The exchange activity will take place in Craiova while the dissemination activities will take place in Craiova and Oreahovo.