The Europe Challenge

The Local Challenge

The Ploes Day Centre is a lending library for teenagers from southern Athens who also benefit from in-house help with mental health. The centre runs weekly labs, as part of the teenagers’ mental well-being, cultural development and social integration. They are supported by the Children’s Open Library, a non-profit association enabling children’s access to books, and have been operating with the teenagers’ participation. Through these working relationships, they are co-designing further support for the local youth and plan to reach out to schools and child protection units to offer their services.   

 The Initiative  

This community has a high percentage of early school leavers who are experiencing psychosocial problems. As a result, they face social exclusion, economic hardship and a lack of access to cultural and educational stimuli. The day centre and library have come together to offer disaffected young people the opportunity to develop social and interpersonal skills and a sense of social belonging through creating a series of open dialogues about the existing typical education process and ways it can be improved.  

After The Europe Challenge

Local leaders from the world of politics, education and local government have been presented with the young people’s findings addressing the shortcoming they face in the local community, and especially at schools. The youth felt very happy to be part of a greater community of libraries and the work is hoped to be continued in other settings such as a school environment. This initiative is transferable to other schools, libraries, youth centres and to other communities such as the elderly, people without home or people in prisons.  

Contact theeuropechallenge@culturalfoundation.eu if you have any questions or want to be connected with the team behind the project.