WHO WE ARE

ASK Yourself is a non-governmental organization created in 2015 by a group of young people who wanted to promote Erasmus + opportunities and non-formal education. The values ​​of the association are equality, education, interculturality, inclusion, sustainability, and civic involvement. Through our activities, we want to encourage young people to try new learning opportunities, discover themselves, improve their skills, and get involved in the development of the society they live in. Our youth workers provide support in implementing the ideas of young volunteers.

We believe that Erasmus + is a chance to discover yourself while discovering other cultures. Erasmus is an opportunity to develop, to learn new things to use to improve the community in which you live. This is the main reason we organized projects and were involved in many partnerships.

So far, we organized 15 projects and have been partners in 50 projects across Europe.
We like to get involved in both youth projects and youth workers mobilities. 

Our projects for youth workers always respond to needs identified within the association or in the community in which we operate. We have focused on improving youth activities and we have implemented projects on how to be a good trainer, how to have an inclusive attitude, or how to improve communication with young people.

Our projects for young people are always starting from the needs and desires of the youth we work with. They are the ones proposing ideas and our youth workers are helping them to write it and implementing them. We had youth exchanges about dancing, cultures, healthy lifestyle, inclusion, community involvement, volunteering.

Many times after we implement a project, we encourage the youth or the youth workers involved to write their own projects. We always have mentorship periods of 3 months after each project, so we really help participants to understand the needs of their community and their organization and to write projects. This is way we are often involved in projects that are taking place in other countries. We have an important role as a partner, from writing to implementing the project. Many times our youth workers and trainers or facilitators in this projects. Therefore, for us, many of the partner projects are an important growing opportunity for our youth workers.
We always focus on a stable partnership, and each project has brought us new reliable partners or improved our relationship with old partners.

Until now, we mainly worked with KA1. We also had a very successful KA2 project in 2016-2018. Together with psychologist from Iceland and Romania, youth workers from Sp and Portugal, we developed a non-formal education manual about mental health (dedicated to youth 14-18). The methods were created and tested by our consortium, and we base many of our methods on this partnership. That was the period when we established a very strong partnership with the local high schools from Bucharest. We will continue to use the methods in our activities with youth.

Our local activities focus on bringing non-formal education into the formal environment. During the years we have held workshops in over 20 high schools (Bucharest, Busteni, Sighișoara), talked to hundreds of students, and encouraged teachers to use non-formal education in classes. We also collaborate with 3 Universities in Bucharest. We held coaching classes for students, worked on topics such as bullying, integration, career, communication, mental health, expressing emotions, and much more.

In Bucharest, we mainly implement weekly activities in our partner high schools: Ion Creanga, Al.I. Cuza and Nichita Stanescu. Due to covid we moved many of our activities online, but each time when it is possible, we meet at the high school or in libraries. Our youth workers are implementing activities after hours or during “clasele de dirigentie”. Our main subject in the last year were mental health, inclusion, and sustainability. We also hold workshops on soft skills and life-skills. Our youth workers always adapt to the needs of the youth (we permanently ask for feed-back from their side).
We have a strong partnership with Bibloteca Metropolitana where we invite the youth and we promote E+.