“Friendship Ambassadors” Association - AAP

The association was set up in 1993. By 2007 it ran various cultural and cultural education projects mainly for pupils. The major partner was the French association Les Amis de Târgovişte in Verneuil sur Avre, who assisted our NGO with various resources (including volunteers). Pupils from Targoviste went to France and their French peers came to Targoviste. Since 2007 the association has been undertaking EDC/HRE and school development projects as well as projects on education of values and local development. We closely work with schools, local in-service teacher training centre, county centre for educational resources, and other NGOs. Between 2008 and 2009 the Friendship Ambassadors Association developed a really innovative project based on the Council of Europe’s tool for quality assurance of EDC in schools. The project was supported by the Council of Europe and the US Embassy in Bucharest. Eight middle and secondary schools in Dambovita county were challenged to integrate their EDC policy and development plans in the whole development process of their institution, to introduce democratic practices (mainly responsibility) in various procedures (such as need analysis, analysing their community’s resources and interests, giving feedback to their students/parents/etc.), to enhance their team building capacity, and to develop criteria to evaluate the quality of some EDC components. The project was really complex and enabled the participants to develop another good practice guide (ccd-dambovita.ro). In 2012 we ran a seven-month project inspired by a British Council’s initiative. The project Creativity Map of Dambovita County – a tool for cultural and entrepreneurial education of high school students brought together 20 students, 44 artists and entrepreneurs, and some trainers. The students interviewed the small business owners and wrote some stories depicting what they understood about those professional and personal experiences. At the end of the project the students presented a performance created by themselves to the public in Targoviste and to the visitors of the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest. They wanted to share the feelings and perceptions generated by this special experience with the adults (parents, teachers, business people) and other youngsters. Starting from the common experience of consumers, they turned to the conditions of creative people. We also put together most of the elements of the projects in a book (hartacreativitatii.wordpress.com). At the end of 2017 the association and “Mihai Viteazul” Middle School in Targoviste held a one-week science exhibition which was visited by over 1200 people, mostly pupils who enjoyed the interactive experiments that explained them various physical phenomena (video). The project was funded by Dambovita County Council. The “Friendship Ambassadors” Association is a member of DARE Network (educators for democracy and human rights in Europe) who currently participates in an Erasmus+ project (DEMOGAMES) aiming to develop analogue and digital games about democracy, a manual for youth workers (ideas to use the games in various educational contexts) and online training courses on game-based learning (dare-network.eu ).