Youth festival for community impact

Youth festival for community impact | Photo: Hannah Busing

Youth Impact through Community Festivals (YICF) is an Erasmus+ KA210-YOU project that promotes youth participation, inclusion, and community cohesion through festivals. 

The core objective of YICF is to empower youth workers and young people (16–24) — especially those facing fewer opportunities — to organize accessible and socially meaningful festivals in their communities. Through training on event planning (public speaking, budgeting, teamwork), community co-creation, and social innovation, the project supports youth to become “community animators.” 

YICF involves a consortium of organisations from Italy, Norway, Romania, and Spain, including GSI partner Strait Up, an association from Tarifa. 

The project was based on key activities: a kickoff in Romania, a trainer training in Norway, six months of capacity-building, training youth in festival co-design, a youth exchange in Italy, and the organization of four local festivals — one in each partner country. The project also produced a toolkit for running inclusive, civic-impact festivals in four languages. The toolkit will be launched and disseminated through EU platforms in 2026. 

Global Society Institute (GSI) in Tarifa, hosted important events that formed part of the project. White House was the main festival site as well as the host of the Project Management Evaluation working group. Through collaboration with the YICF project and its youth participants, the GSI Youth Advisory Board was established.