Une Terre Culturelle is a Popular Education organisation that uses international and educational mobility as a tool for local development. In 2019, Une Terre Culturelle received the De Gaulle-Adenauer Prize for its work in consolidating the French-German relations.

UTC

Our history

Our objectives

Our action

Our team

Our agrements

House IV

Pangera e.V Berlin

Become partner

Une Terre Culturelle, what for?

Une Terre Culturelle is a sustainable human development project that is based on reciprocal and continuous intercultural learning. The association develops projects and actions regarding the implementation of intercultural exchanges that are directly connected with the local realities. Such actions address various contemporary and interdependent themes like education, social inclusion, and ecology. They aim to develop the public’s intercultural sensitivity. Furthermore, the participants in our projects are constituted from a wide array of social backgrounds, and they are often individuals having fewer mobility opportunities

Regardless of him/her being a young person with fewer mobility opportunities, a social worker, or a professional from another field, we view each participant as actors in the society in he/she evolves. By meeting each other, these people from a broad social mix trigger a process of civic growth, openness, and of daily commitment.

All the actions of Une Terre Culturelle are rooted in social and local entrepreneurship. Mobility and encounters as tools for development allow us to venture beyond prejudice and to help people discover other realities all while initiating the reflection on their shared links. Moreover, by implementing these educational actions concerning citizenship, Une Terre Culturelle contributes to the understanding of the interdependencies between our socities environmental, social, economical, and cultural issues. This step is part of the learning process about otherness and the emergence of a real tool for local and international solidarity.

Our history

The “Une Terre Culturelle” (UTC) project began at the Saint-Mauront Bellevue Social Center (Félix Pyat district) in Marseille during the early 1990s.

The Social Center provides social and facilitation missions for neighborhood’s inhabitants. Later between 1992/1993, a project regrouping young people from Portugal (Porto) marked the start of the international exchanges. The goal was to support them in setting up the project and particularly to work on mobility and on the stigmatization from which the inhabitants are victims. A success, the experiment leads to other exchanges.

The Une Terre Culturelle association was founded in 2002 and the exchanges developed by the Social Center ended in 2004. In the beginning, volunteers carried out all the activities. The project gathered around it a group of participating actor/actresses and young people who had taken part in the first youth exchanges. The association recruited its first employee in 2006.

The FGYO (Franco-German Youth Office), which is a historical partner of the association, offered funding in 2010 to create the position of “FGYO pedagogical permanent”. The salaried team grew as the projects and the development of the activities progressed. Early 2018, the team ends up reaching 7 persons.

The year 2018 is a turning point for the association as it marks acquisition of a place in the Sainte-Marthe district, which is situated in the 14th arrondissement of Marseille: The House of Intercultural and Voluntary Work, Maison IV. This place hosts the salaried team and, above all, is a house of youth exchanges, a place of resources and the vital hub of the intercultural exchanges.

Our objectives

International youth mobility

International mobility provides everyone with a real tool for social and local development. It helps them as well with professional integration.

Professional integration

Starting with educational mobility, the major objective is the integration of youth into a learning process and the development of interpersonal, social, intercultural, and professional skills.

Intercultural learning

The association's bases its projects on a unique pedagogy that centers on the meeting of cultures, the enhancement of identities, intercultural dialogue, and mutual respect.

Our action

Une Terre Culturelle organizes international encounters for youth who encounter fewer mobility opportunities on the one hand and the association is developing on the other hand an intercultural learning training course for actors/actresses from the socio-educational and cultural field.

Furthermore, it offers to about 150 youths per year various internships and volunteering missions that take place both locally and internationally in the framework of the French Civic Service (Civic Volunteer Service, International Civic Volunteer Service, French-German Volunteer) and the European Solidarity Corps (ESC).

In Marseille, all these actions and projects have been taking place since April 2018 at the House of Intercultural and Voluntary Work (4 Chemin des Bessons, 13014 Marseille). The Maison IV is an open French-German and Euro-Mediterranean space for sharing and discussion, and it regularly reinvents itself.

The projects carried out since 1993 thanks to the support of the French-German Youth Office (FGYO) and European programs have encouraged, during the creation of the association Une Terre Culturelle in 2002, the production of actions based on stable and quality local and international partnerships.

Learning about each other and understanding ourselves is vital in order to discover the other in a better way.

For each meeting, we build our programs using a basic architectural design that includes:

Contact, communication and group cohesion exercises.
Deciphering and decoding methods, intercultural exercises that promotes the knowledge of one’s cultural environment and the culture of the Other.
Language exercises and games in order to promote the participants’ awareness of learning other languages.
Debates and meetings with local actors and actresses.

Agreements

FGYO

UTC is a FGYO central and head of the “Diversity and Participation” network between Région Sud/Marseille and Hamburg.

Youth and Popular Education

UTC is accredited under the title of Youth and Popular Education (JEP accreditation).

Civic Service

UTC is approved as part of the national and international Civic Volunteer Service.

National Education

UTC is accredited by the Academic Council of Complementary Associations of Public Education.

European Solidarity Corps

UTC is accredited as a hosting, dispatching, and coordinating organization of the European Solidarity Corps (ESC).

Training organization

UTC is recognized as a training organization in the PACA region with a valid activity declaration number.

Sponsorship and donations

UTC is authorized to issue receipts to its donors allowing them to benefit from the tax breaks provided for in Articles 200 and 238 bis of the French General Tax Code.

De Gaulle-Adenauer Prize

2019 De Gaulle-Adenauer Award Winner

Our team

House of Interculturality and Volunteering

Since April 2018, Maison IV occupied a unique space, which is located at 4 Chemin des Bessons in the 14th district of Marseille, it has been the home of an ambitious and innovative project.

Approximately twenty people develop actions around educational mobility: local and international volunteering and internships, inter-neighborhood events, and international exchanges of youth and social workers.

The relationships developed locally encourage the emergence of all types of activities or events with a transnational dimension. They support the efforts of all the actors and actresses in dealing with the socio-economical integration obstacles by using intercultural learning methods as resources.

This participatory project of collective utility favors a better articulation of the accompaniment initiatives and provides support for the creation of diverse international activities: exchanges, international discussion groups, thematic trainings (intercultural animation, social work, diversity, participation, environment, ecology, professional integration, citizenship, and the fight against exclusions amongst other themes.) with the help of various formats that employ individual and/or collective mobility.

PANGERA e.V. Berlin

An initiative of German socio-educational actors and actresses, intercultural facilitators, German associative partners, and Une Terre Culturelle led to the creation of the Pangera association in Germany.

Since 2002, Une Terre Culturelle has accompanied and supported many German partners and actors/actresses in the implementation, the preparation, the follow-up, the facilitation, and the evaluation of youth exchange projects and seminars. Due to the success of many projects in recent years, Une Terre Culturelle and this group of partners decided to create the association Pangera e.V. in Germany.

This feat did not only serve to formalize an already existing network, it is also provided a concrete strategy for overcoming obstacles to opening up international youth work to a more diverse target audience. The members of Pangera e.V. work together with Une Terre Culturelle in order to strengthen French-German cooperation and to concretely implement the "Diversity and Participation" strategy of the French-German Youth Office.

Partners

Une Terre Culturelle builds all of its actions on the basis of stable and high quality local and international partnerships. Our partners in France and abroad welcome young volunteers in Civic service programs and participate in our projects. The complementarity of the structures, as well as the transversality of the actions and approaches, facilitates the forming of a solid partnership network that relies on quality actions.

Local partners

SCAC de l'Ambassade de France en Algérie

Welcoming a local or international volunteer

The role of Une Terre Culturelle

Une Terre Culturelle assume the administrative tasks that enable you to welcome a volunteer within your structure.

The association sends you the applications and organizes the interviews. When the selection is complete, it will sign the contract and answer the young person's questions about their status. Une Terre Culturelle is responsible for registering the volunteer for the PSC1 training course and offers them a small range of civic and citizenship training courses, ranging from a 2-day local training course on the theme of participation and diversity, to a multinational training course lasting several weeks on the theme of interculturality.

Finally, it participates in the smooth running of the mission by organising time for meetings and evaluation with the volunteer.

The missions carried out by the volunteers can be varied and adapted to the needs of the host organization, but also and above all to the wishes of the young people, as they are there to learn as much as to give their energy.

More information

It is an opportunity to gain extra support, the possibility of a fresh look at the internal workings and the chance to be able to exchange practices with someone from another culture and thus build bonds that sometimes last a lifetime.

It is also a way to open up to the world, to other cultures and to create new international partnerships. For the users of the host structures, the presence of volunteers is an enriching way to develop new activities carried out by the volunteer.

Organising an intercultural youth exchange

We at Une Terre Culturelle organise a large part of our intercultural youth exchanges in collaboration with local and international partners: social centers, associations, socio-educational structures, etc. Une Terre Culturelle and its partners construct the intercultural youth exchange projects in order to develop a common project that encompasses the vision and desires of all partners. To this end, we organise regular meetings with all of the project partners.

The association assumes administrative tasks and the logistical organisation of the exchanges. The partners are involved in the "recruitment" of young people and are fully involved in the development of the program and activities, as well as in the evaluation and promotion of the project to the public. Their knowledge of the field and of young people is essential in the construction and the development of the project.

More information

Discover intercultural exchanges on our blog. If you are interested in a partnership with us, you can write to us at info@uneterreculturelle.org. Our youth exchange projects are supported by the French-German Youth Office and the European program Erasmus+.

They support us

How can you support us?

It's easy - make a donation!

Une Terre Culturelle is eligible for patronage and can issue a donation receipt.

Whether you are a participant who has enjoyed an unforgettable educational mobility experience over the last 25 years, whether you have been following the association's actions with a benevolent eye for some time or whether you have just discovered Une Terre Culturelle - your support is precious.

For individuals :

You can make a donation entitling you to a tax reduction of 66% of the amount paid, up to a limit of 20% of the taxable income.

By supporting our association, you contribute to the development and socio-professional integration of young participants with fewer opportunities for mobility, to promote the fight against discrimination and prejudice and to support the rapprochement of Euro-Mediterranean citizens.

For companies :

You are entitled to a corporate tax reduction of 60% of the amounts committed in cash, in kind or in skills, up to a limit of 0.5% of turnover

Your support does not have to be financial, you can also choose to volunteer for a specific task or provide a particular service, for example in connection with the training of our team, the renovation of Maison IV, etc.

Why not make one or more of your employees available to the association? Participating in voluntary work on their working time will increase their motivation and professional well-being. Working directly to have a positive impact on society is meaningful and therefore fulfilling.

Become a volunteer

Volunteering at Une Terre Culturelle

A social and societal commitment that allows you to feel useful and develops your intercultural skills.

There are as many volunteer missions as there are volunteers. Each path is unique and it is adapted to each person's skills and expectations.

Some volunteers from Une Terre Culturelle run gardening workshops with the volunteers at Maison IV, others support the communications’ sector by organizing events, accompanying foreign volunteers in their procedures on their arrival in Marseille and others harness their language skills for the benefit of the public during events.

Une Terre Culturelle, what for?

Our history

Our objectives

International youth mobility

Professional integration

Intercultural learning

Our action

Agreements

FGYO

Youth and Popular Education

Civic Service

National Education

European Solidarity Corps

Training organization

Sponsorship and donations

De Gaulle-Adenauer Prize

Our team

House of Interculturality and Volunteering

PANGERA e.V. Berlin

Partners

Local partners

International partners

Become partner

Welcoming a local or international volunteer

The role of Une Terre Culturelle

Organising an intercultural youth exchange

They support us

Support us

How can you support us?

Une Terre Culturelle is eligible for patronage and can issue a donation receipt.

For individuals :

For companies :

Become a volunteer

Volunteering at Une Terre Culturelle