Youth Development through Cre-Action” (YDCA) is a capacity-building project involving six partner organizations from Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain) and North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia). YDCA aims at addressing unemployment affecting disadvantaged youths (NEET youngsters, youths from poor rural areas, etc.) through sharing educational contents and formats to spread skills and competences of creative and critical thinking through the trans-continental cooperation of the project’s partners.

YDCA traveled to Cairo, Egypt and Tiznit, Morocco to pilot the training materials and exercises that were developed after a thorough literature assessment and identification of best practices from each partner’s nation in order to accomplish the aforementioned objectives.

Both pilot projects were based on the principles of non-formal education, as it is an integral part of a lifelong learning concept that ensures that young people and adults acquire and maintain the skills, abilities and dispositions needed to adapt to a continuously changing environment.

The young people who took part had the opportunity to:

• Improve key critical thinking skills, including active listening and questioning.
• Come up with innovative solutions for contemporary global and/or social challenges by building a social enterprise.
• Boost their imagination and learn new creative thinking techniques.
• To think and develop as many creative ideas as possible.

Finally, participants on both excursions got the chance to interact with diverse cultures, share thoughts and viewpoints on various subjects, and taste local cuisines.

These were events that, in our opinion, will be deeply embedded in our memories!