• Participants doing voluntary work at the summer camp held a party together at the end of July with the children and monitors to celebrate the experiences of the month’s activities.
• The workshops in the BRIDGES programme will start again in September and continue in the autumn.
• Tortosa city council and the Unió de Consells Esportius de Catalunya (UCEC) are the Catalan representatives of this European initiative to promote social cohesion.

 The European BRIDGES project aims to promote and support inclusive communities in Europe, working for the integration of local groups by promoting solidarity. The project’s workshops started in January in Tortosa based on three principal fields of action: sport, culture, and voluntary work. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown situation brought the activities to a temporary halt. Some of these workshops were able to re-start following strict guidelines and health and safety measures, including the rap workshop, mural painting, the workshop studying river invertebrates, and others, as well as the summer camp held in July.

The BRIDGES programme will now take a break until September when the remaining workshops will start again in Tortosa, continuing the activities in which youngsters have collaborated together with a commitment to intercultural understanding and social cohesion. The workshop involving a summer camp for children has come to an end and on 30 July a closing party was held at the Casal Cívic with the volunteers, monitors, and children. They celebrated the success of a month of professional and personal experiences gained in the summer camp with a party exemplifying the great atmosphere, good feelings, solidarity and integration that everyone enjoyed during the camp.

“Projects like Bridges are necessary for a community to move forward, projects where we come together and communicate, where everyone shares something with others,” explains 22-year-old Rabha Et Taouil from Tortosa who has worked in the BRIDGES summer camp as a volunteer, and believes it has been very positive for doing away with the prejudices and stereotypes that many people feel towards other communities.

The summer camp’s last day party was celebrated following all the necessary health and safety measures which were also essential for the workshops which (re)started after the lockdown. It was a great opportunity to share games, anecdotes, and a mid-morning breakfast together. Everyone shared smiles, laughter and selfies showing the excellent atmosphere and great feelings all the participants in the BRIDGES programme have enjoyed, a project where volunteers have got to know new people with similar ideas and objectives whom they aim to stay in touch with after BRIDGES comes to an end.

More information:

Oscar Pla and Ana Moreno

oscar.atzavara@gmail.com / anam@tortosa.cat

Telephone: 977585810