18 March 2024
Respect-Relații-Responsabilitate • Conference for specialists in the field of education, social assistance, youth services and counselors in Cluj-Napoca, Miercurea Ciuc and online.
We warmly invite you to the free conferences organised by Yuppi Camp through which we want to share methods and useful information with professionals in the field and employees of county-level institutions. We would like to develop the community together and thus be able to support children and young people with chronic illnesses in the future.
The conference marks the end of two years of work on the #IAmMyAdvocate project.
This free conference will be held simultaneously in three different locations:
📍 Cluj-Napoca, at Planetarium Café;
📍 Miercurea Ciuc, at Fundația Centrul Educațional Spektrum;
📍 Online,on our dedicated platform.
Participation in the conference is free, but the number of places is limited in Cluj-Napoca and Miercurea Ciuc. We recommend that you register as soon as possible to secure a place, but no later than March 13 at 4:00 p.m.
📩 For registration, please apply here: https://forms.gle/3QSMZMRgo2WY3WXW9 .
You can find the event agenda here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1139030664092801/?post_id=1143827760279758&view=permalink
Please share this invitation with colleagues and contacts in the field.
💕 We look forward to meeting and learning together!
We help youth - current and former camp participants - with chronic illnesses make their voices heard and advocate for their rights.
#IAmMyAdvocate is a project for and about young people. It was developed together with young people, and over 65 chronically ill young people will be directly involved in this project in various activities. For example, the training and development of self-representation skills in front of local authorities in order to promote a system of systemic changes in the local communities of which they are a part of, and provide a positive precedent for the civic involvement of other young people in the coming years.
We propose to respond to a problem at national level, namely the representation, participatory involvement and access to social integration facilities of chronically ill young people in Romania.
The launch of the project took place in 2022, in Cluj-Napoca.
"Many people don't even know that I have diabetes. I haven't really told anyone about it, just a few people. I was embarrassed", confesses Ionuț Simion, a 24-year-old young man, former participant of the Yuppi camps.
Chronically ill young people need courage: the courage to be themselves, the courage to make their voices heard. #IAmMyAdvocate is a project officially launched on Tuesday, May 24, in Cluj-Napoca, through which Yuppi Camp wants to create a community where current and former participants of the Yuppi experiential therapy camps can share their problems encountered due to the disease and help each other each other to overcome those difficult moments, they can increase their self-confidence, feel accepted and understood, and are encouraged to make their voices heard. A place where they can find courage.
Among the project's activities are the creation of two support groups on Facebook; actions to identify problems in the community of chronically ill young people and the implementation of a project, carried through by them, to find solutions to these problems; the organisation of awareness courses for teachers, about the situation of chronically ill children; and the organisation of Yuppi camps for teenagers.
"Yuppi Camp was founded more than 10 years ago, which means that many participants are now adults and can no longer return as camp participants. I always felt the need to keep in touch with them, to do something useful for and with them, but I didn't have enough time, enough money. At one point, in a moment of impulse to do something, I created a Facebook group for former camp participants, but later I did not have time to maintain this group: to come up with new posts, with interesting stories, to stimulate interaction, and with time the communication in the group stopped", recalled László Zsuzsa, president of the Yuppi Camp Movement Association, #IAmMyAdvocate project manager.
In 2021, when the possibility of funding for young people with various difficulties (through the Norwegian funds) arose, the young people in this group were asked what would be most useful to them.
"I asked the members of this group what were the problems they faced through their maturing, what were the difficulties they encountered, if they managed to overcome these moments, and what exactly helped them. To my great surprise I could not identify a common denominator. But at a second attempt, I realised that they all actually had something in common: they all mentioned the moment when they were able to accept themselves, began to trust themselves. The moment when they realised and accepted that life must be lived together with this disease and they learned to have the courage to talk about it at school, college, among friends, in their romantic relationship, at work, etc., explained Zsuzsa.
"Then I realised that chronically ill young people don't just need a politician, an umbrella association to fight for their rights. But, more importantly, they need to be honest with themselves, accept themselves, trust themselves, know how to demand their rights and make their voices heard. That's how the #IAmMyAdvocate project was born, through which we don't actually help them, but we create a context for them to help themselves", added László Zsuzsa.
Ionuț Simion is now 24 years old, and Saturday marked the 10th year since he was diagnosed with diabetes. Ionuț lives in Cluj, has two jobs and works 14 hours a day, which makes the maintenance of a diabetes-friendly lifestyle quite difficult. He participated in Yuppi camps three times, the last time in 2015. "I didn’t want to be excluded from society, even if I have diabetes. In fact, many people don't even know that I have diabetes. I haven't really told anyone about it, just a few people. I was embarrassed. In the Yuppi camp I started to accept a little more that I have this disease because I met people like me, who don't avoid you, they're not afraid, they don't express avoidance", Ionuț revealed.
Dósa Csaba is 17 years old, and his arthritis appeared in the fall when he started seventh grade. Csaba lives in Târgu Mureș and now he is in the 11th grade. He participated in Yuppi camps three times, the last time in 2019. "In 2016, I had the first symptoms of arthritis, in my ankle. I then needed three months of treatment: one in the hospital and two months of medication treatment at home. When the symptoms started, it hurt so bad I couldn't even walk. A year passed after the treatment when the symptoms reappeared. I went on a long diet, which helped me a lot. Yuppi Camp helped me break away from my regular life, there I was surrounded by people like me, and that further helped me to be more sociable and make friends more easily," Csaba confessed.
The #IAmMyAdvocate project will include several events and actions that will take place over the next two years and will involve at least 200 chronically ill young people from all over the country, aged between 14 and 35, of which at least half are from disadvantaged areas:
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The project is run by Yuppi Camping Motion Association and benefits from a funding of 50,000 euros, through the Active Citizens Fund Romania program, financed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through EEA Grants 2014-2021.
The content of this website does not necessarily represent the official position of the EEA and Norwegian Grants 2014-2021; for more information go to www.eeagrants.org. Information about Active Citizens Fund Romania is available at www.activecitizensfund.ro.
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