About us - Experiential Youth Association
Our association was founded in 2012 and its main activity is the maintenance and operation of the Experience Workshop community space and the organization of volunteer activities. We created the Experience Gallery in 2010, because there are too many children in Hungary who grow up in bad conditions and unfortunately the education system does not help them break out of deep poverty. Our community space is operating in one of the poor neighbourhoods in the city of Pecs, Hungary, where the rate of unemployment is especially high, and the people living there usually drop out of the school system before finishing. The lack of school success is the cause of deprived socio-cultural background and poverty. The families living here cannot afford any service that is helping their children improve in school, not to mention the lack of possibilities for free-time and leisure activities.
In Hungary, the number of children living in extreme poverty is increasing every year. According to last year's report of the Children's Rights Civil Coalition, the number of children living in poverty has tripled compared to 2010. This situation is only further aggravated by the growing phenomenon of school segregation. If someone is born into poor financial circumstances, they have little chance of breaking out of generational poverty in Hungary today. And the school only reproduces inequalities. The position of women in Hungary is also very bad. According to the data of a representative research, in Hungary at least 400,000 women and their children suffer abuse every year (source: nokjoga.hu). The situation of women living in poverty is even worse, in most cases their suffering remains invisible, they have no one to turn to, and they pass on their traumas and bad patterns to their children.
The mission ofour association is to create opportunities for disadvantaged children. We aim to promote social mobility for the children who come to us and, through them, for their current and future families. We achieve this equality of opportunity by building and strengthening small communities. Our long-term goal is to make an inclusive community space stable and known in one of Pécs' segregates, which attracts families from different social backgrounds due to its engaging community, developmental and experiential programmes.
In the Experience Workshop we mentor 35 children on a continuous, up-to-date and very personal basis. Four mentors and three assistant mentors work with the children on a daily basis. Our activities are very complex, not only focusing on individual skill development and learning support, but also emphasizing experiential learning and talent development. Small group violence prevention work for adolescents is part of this complex professional program. For both boys and girls, we have set up a number of support groups with a supportive approach, focusing on strengthening young people's self-esteem and preventing intimate relationship violence. The strength groups are led and/or professionally coordinated by two mentors who have completed the Women for Women Together Against Violence Association's facilitator training.
