Donor:

ENPI Cross border cooperation program ‘Hungary-Slovakia-Romania-Ukraine, 2007-2013

Role in the project:

Beneficiary (Leading implementing partner)

Implementation period:

March 2014 – March 2015

The project partners were the Department of Education, Science, Family, Youth And Sport Of Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration (Ukraine), Ivan Krevan Local Development Association (Romania) and Kalamáris Association (Hungary).

The main project objective was to encourage youth debate initiatives and networks across the border covering Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg of Hungary and Maramures county of Romania. 

Project outputs and results:

1. The International Carpathian Debate Association was established basing its activity on the Strategy prepared by the project, which defined the basic principles of the development of the debate movement in the project target regions. Under the aegis of the Association 31 debate clubs were created (350 students and pupils), which spread the culture of tolerant discussion in the communities of the three regions. The clubs were supported by multilingual study guides about debating; e-library for the assistance of the debaters; multilingual map of the debate clubs, posters and leaflets; easy and quick access to the information about the world, national and regional debate events through the web-site of the Association, developed for these purposes. 
2. The Memorandum in support and promotion of the Carpathian Debate Association was elaborated and signed by the partner organizations. 
3. The knowledge and skills on the debate mastership were provided for approximately 350 youth leaders from three countries. 
4. A number of regional and international events have been conducted to build successful youth partnership and network. In particular, the Cross-border debate study sessions in each project location provided the leaders of the debate clubs, teachers of schools and universities from Hungary, Romania and Ukraine with motivation and new knowledge; three regional (qualifying) debate tournaments organized in three target countries debating over more than 10 topics about social and economic issues; the Carpathian International Debate Tournament organized for final debate round; the Thematic Debate Show was held and the problem of labour-related emigration of the youth was publicly discussed as an equally burning problem for all the three cross-border countries).
5. In total, 10 innovation training products – video lessons on debating, were developed basing on the debate rounds held during the project.