History
"Casa Europa". A practical beginning of European
co-operation.
   Casa Europa is the fruit born of many European approaches and exchanges between young people and it marks the building of a Europe from down below.

   The starting point of the Project Casa Europa is the work of the "Aus- und Fortbildungsverbundes (AuF)" in the region of Kassel (Germany), which since 1986 has been offering concrete help to young jobless people in the planning of their jobs and lives. This help materialises in a series of measures of qualification and occupation, through which old abandoned buildings are rehabilitated and refurbished to serve new needs.

   Along with this work of qualification, the AuF has established and kept contact with many parts of Europe. Among these, and for ten years now, there has been a close co-operation with the municipalities of Cehegín, Bullas and Calasparra (region of Murcia, in the south-east of Spain).

   The repeated international youth meetings - attended not only by young people from Germany and Spain, but also from Italy, Denmark, England and Sweden - are a reflection of these European co-operation. These are important meetings both for the common work on craftsmanship and artistic projects and for the work and learning together. All this has led Wüllmersen Castle to become a cultural youth workshop with a youth camp and a museum of initiatives on agricultural techniques.

   The setting of an international meeting point for young people in Wüllmersen also meant the creation of the first Casa Europa where - with some economic support - young people from different European regions can meet together.

   In 1995 another positive factor came into the project: An old palace in the old part of the town of Cehegín (region of Murcia) was granted to the project. It was then rehabilitated in later youth meetings and it is now being managed on shared responsibility by German and Spanish partners.

   Meanwhile, a third Casa Europa is being built in the Italian province of Forli/Cesena (Emilia Romagna), in the municipality of Sarsina, town-twinned with the German town of Grebenstein in the region of Kassel, thus joining the plan to create places for international meetings. Since the beginning of the summer of 1997, an old school has been rehabilitated for this purpose, thanks also to the active participation of apprentices of bricklaying and building from the regional occupational house in Hofgeismar-Wolfhagen.

   The three Casa Europa together constitute the pillars of an homonymous yet new European project which aims at a closer association in the future.

   The creation of a wider network of houses in different regions of Europe will help to achieve the goal of enabling young people to know the life, culture and history of other countries; the learning of foreign languages, of new working techniques on particular projects, as well as exchanges, seminars and courses aiming at the solution of comprehension problems and different mentalities. All this is the pillar of a common Casa Europa. And it is a permanent challenge to fill Casa Europa with solid lifelike contents, notwithstanding the co-operation of different initiatives, institutions and organisations in the region of Kassel.