Ilindenska 172
7000 Bitola
Macédoine du Nord
- Democracy and community development
- Gender
- Human rights
- Youth and education
Loesje Bitola was born in 2018 as part of the worldwide Loesje network and is an active institution for Education & Training based in North Macedonia. The organization was founded by a group of youth workers, trainers and project managers active for more than 10 years in youth work locally and internationally, to respond to the needs of young people, youth workers and educators, as well as the society as a whole. We work actively towards promoting active citizenship, fostering human rights education, raising awareness about the values of diversity, equality, tolerance, and freedom of expression towards combating discrimination, hate speech, social and religious intolerance, all these topics concerning attitudes and behaviors of young people.
We aim to empower youth (especially from marginalized groups) towards active European citizenship, responsible for their actions and capable of being committed in the societies where they live. Our youth workers work to equip them with different skills and competences to help them build a strong society. We believe that each of us has some strength, knowledge, and experience that can be shared. We implement the Loesje creative methodology, which gives us a chance to express ourselves in a different, creative way and to exchange knowledge. Our goal is to increase the awareness in the society about current challenges we are facing, to equip the young people, as well as youth workers, trainers and educators with different creative and innovative skills and competencies and to develop cooperation with local and national institutions and other non-governmental organizations. Also in our plan for empowerment, we aim to increase mobility of young people and youth workers through Erasmus+ experience. The main directions of activity are: – Encouraging active participation of young people on different levels – Supporting role of youth in the community development; – Promoting human rights, ideas of tolerance, inclusion and non-discrimination in society; – Monthly Loesje creative writing workshops – Creation of different materials through new innovative digital tools – Co-organisation of international youth exchanges, training courses, seminars and other events The organisation builds its strategy on the inclusive participation principle to involve young people with different backgrounds and opportunities. We believe that by discovering potential, developing communication and critical thinking skills, and active citizenship, young people will transform their strengths for community development and fostering positive societal changes.
Our youth workers implement diverse non formal educational activities with young people, focusing on their development, empowerment and active participation. We implement creative writing workshops, organized by our stuff for different groups, young people from vulnerable groups, teachers, students, single parents, etc. also on many different topics. We would like to empower our society by developing of critical thinking and creativity. Apart from local activities, we are part of many international projects (youth exchanges, training courses, job shadowings etc.). We prepare different groups of participants, taking part in short and long term, local and international projects and we focus on increasing our capacities by sending young people and youth workers in different events. We cooperate with organization from Europe, Caucasus, MENA region in implementing projects on different topics. At the moment we are running dissemination process of results from projects on following topics: - Human rights education and antidiscrimination - Inclusion and empowerment on LGBTIQ+ community - Empowerment and inclusion of women - Digital tools in youth work - Political participation of young people
With the skills, knowledge and competences we can promote the values of Anna Lind Foundation, by promoting and presenting it's goals and activities, developing new initiatives, taking part of the activities and contributing with our methodology
We want to join the Network because we believe in the goals and activities of the Foundation. We want to join different events, programs and also contribute to development of new initiatives and become stronger together through cooperation.