KRIK is a non-governmental, non-profit organization established by young people, led by young people and it works for and with young people. The translation of the word KRIK is SCREECH/OUTCRY and the inspiration for it came out of the vision of this organization, which is to be the voice of the youth that will be heard and will make changes and contributions in the society. KRIK strives to encourage greater youth participation, youth activism, encourage young people to be more included in the policy making process on local and national level. Krik works on achieving social inclusion and integration of young people with fewer opportunities.
The target groups are deaf, blind, young people having problems fit in the society and having difficult social and economic background and young people with Down syndrome. In order to achieve social inclusion we always work in integrated groups and have the same number of young people with fewer opportunities and typical development. With the activities delivered Krik offer space for social and personal development of young people through different educational activities on local and international level.
From 2015 Krik started working on developing entrepreneurship spirit among young people and we decided to make some changes in our working. For one year and a half the office of Krik was situated in a bar. We share the space with a bar in the Old Bazzar. The first floor is the bar which wasn’t working during the day and was used for organizing events, workshops and trainings. The second floor was our office. This lead us to the new beginning and understanding the needs of the target group Krik work with and finally in February 2017 we opened big youth center for people with disabilities and people without.
The mission of KRIK is empowerment of youth by motivating them for raising their voice and contributing in the society, as well as supporting youth work and youth workers by acting in different areas in order greater youth participation, youth activism and involvement in policy making process on local and national level.
Center for Youth Activism CYA KRIK is delivering different activities for social and personal development of young people with and without disabilities by using non-formal education. The activities are: trainings on various topics according on the needs of the youth, workshops with different thematic, seminars, conferences, non-formal gatherings, summer camps etc.. All of the activities are delivered by experts in the field and by the youth workers that Krik has.
KRIK have organized, coordinated and participated in national and international projects in Macedonia and abroad. In 2015 we started sending young people with fewer opportunities on International activities. We are partners of many training, youth exchanges, we sent and received volunteers for EVS and started working on Strategic Partnership from September 2015 about social inclusion of blind young people.
KRIK is also involved in National processes regarding increasing the quality and recognition of youth work. Krik is member and part of the board of the Union of Youth Workers which works on recognition of youth work. From June 2015 Krik is also member of the National Youth Council of Macedonia which is the biggest platform of youth organizations in Macedonia and also member of the European Youth Forum.
The program that we mostly work on is social inclusion. KRIK works with deaf young people coming from the National School for Deaf Young People, blind young people coming from the National School for Blind Young People, young people having Down syndrome and young people coming from difficult social and economic background. We mostly offer youth work on local level: workshops, events, trainings, counselling, non formal gathering etc. The target group of our organisation are young people, mostly students from high schools and university. We try to include as many people possible and to work on different levels and activities. Usually we work inside of the institution (leading workshops in schools) and in our new offices-the youth centre offering long term youth programs.
For more than 4 years, we work with young people with fewer opportunities directly in the institutions where they are such as special schools, centres etc. The collaboration and communication with the institutions till now is going really good. The teachers and the staff from the schools are really open to working with us.