Our projects
Spotlight project
Projects form the basis of the work we do at Civil Connections.
The current highlight is the ICT for Education Uganda project in partnership with Network for Active Citizens, which was an answer to Covid19-created setbacks for low-resourced communities in the Yumbe district in the north-west Uganda.
Watch the video to find out more and check out our other projects below!
Current projects
The project objective is to provide education to 18-29 aged youth for a better and more moderated use of new technologies oriented towards the protection of our natural and physical environment, as well as encouraging them to take digital and or physical initiative to defend our values. We intend to raise youth awareness about their digital practice, develop a training programme, encourage the sense of initiative, and equip the youth supporters. Starting in January 2023 the project runs across Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Greece.
The Crossing is a performative project that uniquely combines Virtual Reality (VR), film and performing arts to make visible the conditions around immigration – the goal is to increase knowledge and understanding for the situation and premises of migrants/refugees. It seeks to make the audience understand what pushes an individual to leave their home and family, to spend their savings and risk their lives at sea. Risking facing the unforeseen and suffering isolation, exploitation, and humiliation, embarking on a journey that has no sure duration, all for a dream that often turns into tragedy. The Crossing aims to change the sometimes-negative narrative about migration and create a more empathetic understanding about the great migration of people happening around the world. In order to help our audiences to better identify with the harsh realities that people around the world sometimes face, we have chosen to use VR presented as a performative experience that each visitor enters.
Cultural Connections for Migrant Inclusion
This project aims to support social and youth workers who interact with ethnic minorities in their everyday occupations. Specifically, we aim to strengthen the capacity of these professionals to create positive change and more engaged communities through increasing their intercultural communication skills. By working closely with them, the project partners will develop tailored and practical tools for their practice, providing them with new training opportunities and pedagogical tools. The project runs between Denmark and Norway.
Comin2Europe - Migrant Stories Podcast project
The project aims at contributing to enriching migrant inclusion efforts into European local communities through sharing reflective stories and dialogues on migrant experiences and perceptions. This is to contribute to an EU that is tolerant to diversity and that has increased supportive tools in inter-cultural citizenship for easier and quicker migrant inclusion. This will be through developing a podcast of 60 episodes of migrant stories contributing to enriching/nuancing the migration dialogue. The project runs across Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
TELL-TO-ACT’s central ambition is through the use of stories and storytelling, it creates action and common understanding or narratives towards common understanding, that are grounded in a value-based approach. The concept consists of a toolbox of storytelling and dialogue methods that can be used to: 1. Create clarity and motivation. 2. Develop strategies together with those involved. 3. Use for planning, facilitation, and evaluation of projects. 4. Clarify buzzwords and shared values. 5. And finally in the general communication internally and externally.
The project seeks to promote European values and intercultural dialogue to build common histories in the face of immigration into the European Union and new forms of interaction over the past and many years to come. The project’s fundamental value is its aim to do this through enhancing digital skills, new technologies learning and utilization, critical thinking, and media literacy, but also help to build a virtual cultural heritage museum in order to provide an available repository of cultural knowledge.The project aims to create a range of materials, from an augmented reality game, a Virtual Cultural Heritage Museum and a real-time live action role play.
The full title of this project is – “Maintaining Civil Society Space in Uganda through capacity building, gaps reduction and government – CSOs constructive dialogue”. It has background/it is a reaction to the sustapensions of CSO/NGOs that took place in Uganda in August 2021 – where 54 of these entities fell victim. The project goes out to provide an alternative process for restoring the operational space of the affected CSOs, as well as others that could be in danger over the months and years to come. We want to activate a CSOs – Government interaction platform where sustained dialogue takes place, to bring the two estranged sides closer to each other.
The full title of the project is – “Decrypting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for everyday European youths – facilitating knowledge, network, tools, actions, and familiarization (SDG Decrypt)”.
With this project we want to develop a model for mobilizing marginalized youths and communities to work towards achieving of the SDGs and sustainability in general, which they often feel is a high-end framework for the “untroubled” communities and feels cryptic/complicated. This will increase the chances of reaching agenda 2030 by creating possible conditions for involving all, and “leaving no one behind”- no matter the resource base or background. It will also give empowerment to the target communities to be part/central in their own development.
Our project has its overarching goal to empower marginalized teen girls in Morocco to mobilize and advocate for change at the national level for teen girls’ rights on issues such as sexual harassment, forced dropping out of school, and forced early marriage. This project is grounded by two specific objectives: (1). To build capacity for marginalized teen girls in Morocco to effectively advocate for their rights by activating Girl Leaders through empowerment workshops and skills training in lobbying and advocacy, leading to the development of a Teen Girl Bill of Rights. Includes facilitating structures for teen girls to access role models and allies with key policy stakeholders. And (2). To facilitate a strong grassroots girls’ rights movement which mobilizes Girl Leaders to demand change through garnering support from other teen girls, local and regional communities as well as at the national level to uphold and to reform girls’ rights. The project will last 12 months.
Together with Early Care International, Civil Connections have received funding from CISU for the project Mapping Early Childhood Development Programmes in Ethiopia (MECDP)!
Early Care International focuses on the mapping of Early Childhood Development (ECD) programmes in Ethiopia, which are based on the worldwide agenda Early Childhood Development. As an organization, they strive to coordinate early childhood development programmes, build the capacity of stakeholders and strengthen partnerships in low and middle-income countries.
Along with InspiNest, we are excited to announce this project which will empower more than 2000 young girls to innovate in their communities. This project aims to establish 5 entrepreneurship hubs in 12 months at different junior and senior schools in the Bono Region. Trained change-makers will aim to empower young women sustainably and spearhead a regional advocacy group to work towards a more supportive and entrepreneurial culture.
Girls Choose - Zimbabwe
This project aspires to create a conducive environment for young people in their diversity – with specific emphasis on girls and young women, to access Sexual Reproductive Health Rights/Services (SRHRs) and HIV related information – freely and safely.
With MAZ, we want to provide local grassroots communities access to these, starting with Masvingo province. We aim to improve the futures of young people in this challenging context by refusing to accept that their destinies should be jeopardized by a lack of something as basic as access to reproductive and sexual rights and services.
In late October 2021, we kicked off Facilitating Youth Policy Development, a civil society project run in Georgia by the Academy of Peace and Development APD, coordinated by Civil Connections in Denmark and funded by CISU—the civil society branch of DANIDA. The project has three central objectives:
1.To increase the competences (mobilize & capacitate) of youths, civil society organisations and civil servants to address youth issues
2. To foster the establishment of sustainable forms of cooperation among youths, local youth organisations and local authorities
3. Based on the National Youth Policy Document and the lessons learned, to design a regional-based/ youth policy guide and an action plan for bringing this to use, and advocate for its approval and uptake
Mayuge RISE Youth Soccer league, previously known as RISE soccer league, is a recently relaunched 5-month football weekend event comprising eight youth soccer teams, each with at least 30 players/members. The league is home to 240 players and at least 500 spectators every weekend, engaging 2800 youths and members of their communities every month. The league has set out five immediate objectives: to provide a set of accessible leisure sports activities for youths during their free time; to draw young people away from destructive behavior towards a more engaging peer-run alternative; to promote the talents of young people within the field of sports; and to provide space for coming together, building common linkages, and networking. The league acts as a mobilization space for talking about community development and issues youths face.
Coming to the Nordics tells the real stories of migrants who have journeyed to and made lives in Nordic countries. At a time when migration is such a central and heated debate, let’s take the time to hear what life as a migrant is really like, what is meant by integration and whether it is a fair concept. We aim to produce a podcast series of 30 stories from non-western migrants, reflecting on:
- Their journey: the reasons for and process of coming to the Nordics
- Life here: challenges, successes, contradictions, navigation of understandin
- Any advice they would have for new comers to ease their faster settling in
We are piloting a grassroots-based structure for the mobilizing, capacitating, and mentoring of youth leaders in local governments in Uganda. Outputs include:
- Youth and CSOs leaders that are be better fitted to carry out their roles in local governance representation and policy-making.
- More regular interfaces between youth leaders and the youths they represent in form of quarterly round tables and meetings, as a way of systematizing and increasing accountability to their constituencies, and platforms for policy inputs.
- Emergence of strong grassroots-based policy inputs through initiating a Community Journalists Volunteers (CJV) program.
We want to contribute to new approaches maintaining the education of young people in low-resourced communities faced with high-cost online learning. We will do this by: Implementing and utilizing a toll-free distributed telephone line to connect participating primary schools in Yumbe town council with Community Extension Teachers (CETs) to provide home school education during and after Covid 19; Compiling and distributing copies of a “Pass Primary Leaving Exams questions” pamphlet to the participating schools to guide students, CETs, and parents at home with a continued familiarity with the upcoming structure of the exams and reading practice. Mobilizing and guiding other stakeholders— especially parents—on their roles and responsibilities to enable continued learning within homes both during and after Covid-19 as a way of supporting their children towards succeeding at these exams, and their general education.
Protecting Our Planet
Protecting our Planet is an Erasmus + Youth Exchange in Turkey, where 60 young people from Denmark, Turkey, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic and Italy came together in Istanbul to learn about pressing ecological challenges to their local communities, and discuss solutions to these. This was part of the ambition to prepare young Europeans to become aware and take charge of protecting their planet. The 5 days were a mix of sharing experiences, intercultural exchanges, motivational talks, innovating games and lots of nature excursions.
Climate Ambassadors
In late November 2021, 60 young people from Turkey, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Macedonia came together on a youth exchange to learn about ecological challenges.
Thanks to Erasmus+’s support over the years, Civil Connections makes youth challenges happen as a part of our drive to create robust communities through networks, knowledge development and skills/experience sharing.
According to data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2016 around 36.7 million people were living with a contagious illness where most of the subjects of this illness were between the ages of 25 and 29. Due to a lack of awareness among European youth, they are uninterested about undergoing the tests necessary to combat contagious diseases. This situation puts both them personally and their society’s collective health in danger. This project aims to increase consciousness about the possible outcomes of this neglect, and to widen the youth’s understanding of infectious diseases. Throughout the project, participants will be informed on the topic of protection from illnesses and the procedures that they need to take in case of becoming infected.