Born in Senegal, he fucked a one-way plane ticket to Navarre at only 15 years old. Here, he and his mother, his brothers were reunited with his father after 14 years of separation. It was the SEI Elkartea Association that helped them in the process of family reunification and migratory bereavement and, now, he does the same, as a volunteer, with other young people who are experiencing a similar situation.
This year, Youssou Ndiaye (23 years old) was awarded the Youth Prize 2024a prize framed in the Youth Prizes which were also awarded to the Kabia Project of the Lantxotegi Elkartea Association, with the Social Participation Prize, and in the Suspertu Program of the Proyecto Hombre de Navarra Foundation, with the Prize of Entity.
THE Youth Prizeorganized by the Navarro Youth Institute of the Department of Housing, Youth and Migration Policies, are aimed at people, groups and entities who contribute through their actions, works or creations to the promotion of social participation, autonomy and quality of life of young people. in Navarre. For this 27th edition, a total of 30 budding candidates for one of three prizes, worth 2,500 euros each.
Ndiaye says that when he arrived in Pamplona 8 years ago, it helped him a lot to know that there were more people in the same situation, whom he met thanks to the SEI Elkartea association. . “The language was very difficult for me and I would go to school or play football and look at the rest of the boys and girls, because I didn’t understand what they were saying,” he says, adding that this is precisely his hobby. , football, helped him overcome the language barrier. “I met a lot of friends, I started hanging out with people my age and talking to them, and between that and school, little by little, I progressed,” he emphasizes.
Almost since he started his new life in Navarre is part of SEI. First as a minor, developing his own process of mourning and family reunification; later, as a premonitor to accompany those who had just arrived; and, from now on, Ndiaye is one of the association’s most committed volunteers.
“When a person feels that they have been helped with something, they want to help other people who are in the same situation. All the the beginnings are difficult and, as they helped me to improve, I think that now it is my turn to make this effort so that someone else can also improve”, he says, to encourage “all the world to do it, because it’s good to help others and, ultimately, contribute to creating a better world.
After higher studies in Welding and Boilermaking, Ndiaye works in a company and, in his free time, he participates in different awareness and participation actions of the SEI, where he has become a reference for recently immigrant boys and girls, to whom he says: “Look how I am; 8 years ago I wouldn’t have believed it, so the same thing will happen to you.
Social Participation Prize 2024
It’s been 40 years since Lantxotegi Elkartea Association working on socio-educational intervention with young people in situations of exclusion. Since its creation, interculturality has been one of the values underlying all programs. Thus, in 2020, due to the vulnerable situations of people arriving in Navarrethe entity began working in the field of basic skills training for young migrants, where the Ahlan Bek reception, support and training program was born.
It was two years later, in June 2022, that the association created the Kabia program to work on community leisure with young people, since this was one of the needs that the students of Ahlan Bek had expressed during program meetings. A program, it should be emphasized, which consists of working on co-responsibility in the reception processoffering spaces for “unlikely encounters” between young people benefiting from a support network in Navarre and young people who are beginning their process of inclusion in the host society.
The specific objectives of these “meetings”, which are now in their fifth edition, are to generate interpersonal links between young migrants and locals, to encourage cultural exchanges and reflection on co-responsibility, and to promote active participation. young people in the community. . Arantxa Caminos García, responsible for the program with Marta Jiménez Serranounderlines that these spaces are designed “to generate relationships which are established over time, which are quality relationships”. The ultimate goal, in the words of Caminos, is “to be able to develop full and effective inclusion”.
Lantxotegi, in collaboration with other entities and groups, works in community so that Pamplona becomes a “welcoming city”, and for this they organize meetings such as, for example, the anti-racist World Cup. “It is necessary for people who have lived in the city for a longer time to open up and read about small actions that promote the inclusion of the population who have not been there for so long,” explains Caminos.
“This award is for the community,” he concludes. It’s a project focused on horizontality. Without community participation and people being encouraged to participate, this would not exist. “This recognition goes out to all the people who have contributed and supported this program, and who continue to come. For us, it is a gift to be able to have this place of mutual learning and personal development,” underlines the manager.
Entity Prize 2024
The Supertu program of Navarre Man Project Foundation was born in 1997 in response to the need that the entity felt to undertake effective prevention in the field of youth. This is a program that provides intensive work with young people at risk and their families, through direct attention to adolescents with risky behaviors, support, training and advice.
As the Foundation points out, one of the main characteristics of Wake up This involves intensive work with adolescents themselves, but also with their fathers, mothers and/or other relatives, thanks to the work of specialized professionals. For families, Suspertu offers a father and mother school in which educational and conflict resolution skills are taught to teenage sons and daughters.
Garikoitz Mendigutxia, doctor of psychology and director of the programexplains that the initiative goes beyond the prevention of drug use itself: “We address different risk behaviors linked to inappropriate use of screens or video games, or to problems linked to sports betting. »
The search for more current and more effective forms of intervention is one of the pillars of Supertuwho adapt to changes in society, such as the predominance of screens, through constant evaluation of the work they carry out. “The program has two doctoral theses to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions carried out, one related to families and the other to adolescents,” he says.
Mendigutxia points out that This award “is recognition of the career“, in these times when everything is going so fast and it is difficult for projects like this to sustain over time”, given that they have been active for almost three decades, during which they have also proposed external prevention in schools. “Prevention among young people allows us to help them in their development process so that they have the life they want to have, avoiding the passage or escalation of problems in the future,” he says.
So far, thanks to this program, Foundation served approximately 3,000 teenagers from Navarre with problems related to drug use, family conflicts and problems at school. In addition, more than 1,500 hours of prevention were provided in schools, involving nearly 16,000 students, and conferences and workshops were organized for more than 2,000 families.
