Huyen Trang is a youth worker, co-founder of New Horizons, a non-profit organisation based in the small town of Tusa in Sicily,  dedicated to promoting social development and cultural preservation for the local territory. Trang recently participated in a Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange TEP training for youth organisations.

Trang helps young people of Tusa make the most of Erasmus + opportunities, especially for those whom travel is expensive. “It costs more than 2000 euros to travel from Sicily to the UK, for a two-weeks English course. Through Erasmus+ opportunities we helped 80 young people go abroad last year”. Now she knows, Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange also offers young people opportunities for multicultural experiences, as a complement to physical exchange actions.

“The TEP training for youth organisations opened my eyes to a wealth of possibilities”. Tusa is a small town on the north coast of Sicily, reliant on tourism and agriculture. Virtual Exchange helps young people living there to keep in touch with what is happening in other countries. “We want to use this technology in the future and we are planning seminars to raise awareness about Virtual Exchange. Now that we have been trained up to use facilitation techniques, we are much more confident about how to use it and how to reach its potential”.

For a place like Tusa, Trang thinks Virtual Exchange is the way to go. It means more “efficient use of time and resources” and gives young people's flexibility by “opening new windows to the world”, without necessarily “spending a fortune to travel”. “I learned that young people are enthusiastic about learning from each other. Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange enables their voices to be heard and their ideas to be exchanged”, Trang concludes.

Interested in participating in the next TEP training for youth organisations? Read more