¡Hola a tod@s! My name is Amina, I come from Italy and I’ve been doing my IVY Volunteering experience for a month and a half now. I am currently volunteering with Vida Láctea in Lugo, Galicia as part of the AYCH communication team.
You may ask: what is AYCH? AYCH stands for Atlantic Youth Creative Hubs and it’s an Interreg project developed by an international partnership between 5 countries (Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland and the UK) in the European Atlantic area.
Its main goal is to promote entrepreneurship and youth employment, and to develop new approaches and interventions in support services for young people across the Atlantic space in the creative sector, connecting people, ideas, skills, technologies and companies in a network of hubs, in order to unlock the creative potential of young entrepreneurs.
By hosting events such as Hackathons and Creative Jams, AYCH wants to create awareness around specific matters that affect the youth of these areas and to try and solve them through prototyping in international groups. During these events the participants are split into groups of 4 – 6 people and are assigned firstly a topic to work on, and secondly, a mentor to help them coordinate. The groups are given two or three days (depending on the length of the event) to prototype their ideas and prepare for the final presentation. This will happen on the last day in front of a jury that will then elect the winning team(s) and then give them prizes.
The programme is aimed at young motivated people from the European Atlantic area that want to discover new ways of thinking, create ideas and collaborate in a transnational environment. Every partner finds a group of young participants, mentors and experts that will take part in the event. For every event there’s a hosting partner, while the others tend to take care of the communication and the promotion of the event.
As part of AYCH’s communication team I take care of the promotion of the project. More specifically, I am responsible for social media posts and video editing before and after every event.
I am truly surprised by how much I like my tasks here. Before coming here I had just a little experience in promoting events, so I got here without much expectations. Every single day I learn new things in the communication field and I am really motivated to remain in this particular sector after my experience. I also love my new “work family”, I love spending time with my colleagues during and after working hours, I can genuinely say that they represent my favourite part of this volunteering!
– Amina, IVY Project Partner in Vida Lactea, for the Atlantic Youth Creative Hubs – AYCH Interreg project, under the Programme Interreg Atlantic Area
