Mölndal is a city just south of Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden, it has approximately 65 000 inhabitants and is the third largest municipality in the Region Västra Götaland. In Mölndal, you find modern living areas bordering to wide areas of nature and idyllic countryside. Mölndal is an expanding city, with many exciting development projects going on. A totally new city center will emerge during the next few years.
Mölndal has different units and departments working for the development of our community. One of these is the unit of Youth and Community work, a part of the Culture and Leisure department. Our main focuses are Public Health, Community work and Youth influence.
We have a variety of functions who work for inclusion, participation and influence. We have six youth centers, four coordinators who work in our most vulnerable areas, two coordinators for public health, two coordinators for youth influence and one international coordinator; Eurodesk. Our common objective is to strengthen the city and increase the livelihood of its citizens and to strengthen the role of the youths in Mölndal both through our six Youth Centers as well as through our Youth Council and Mölndals Youth Editorial project.
The city of Mölndal is also member of the Eurodesk network, where we share experience of the international work with other municipalities.
Youth Centers
The Youth Centres of The City of Mölndal is based on the understanding that the best way to strengthen young people is supporting them in being resources in their own lives. By providing true influence and the possibility to take responsibility for their own will, actions and activities, we believe that young people will develop a good self-esteem and a solid social capacity. We fully believe in the informal learning when taking part in e.g. youth exchange and EVS.
The 6 Youth Centres of The City of Mölndal are open to youth in the ages from 13-19 years old, open to all youth regardless of background. In the centres we have many activities like different sports, Internet, handicraft such as ceramics or knitting. Most youth centres have travel groups where the youth works for one semester or a year with different activities to save up money. This is a good method for social capacity building for the youth to learn responsibility and cooperation.
Community work in Mölndal
Mölndal City works with community work in four residential areas: Bifrost, Lindome, Kållered and Åby. The main focus of the projects is to improve well-being, security and participation for the residents and is based on social work in residential areas. The community work is based on cooperation between various administrations, Mölndal city and external parties such as associations, housing associations, property owners, police and church.
Participation and co-creativity from those living in the area is central to social work. As a resident, you can participate in safety walks, future workshops and respond to surveys regarding your living situation. Each residential area also employes ten upper secondary school students who work three hours a week with different projects aimed at strengthening their residential area. The youth organize events, hold lectures, they help the elderly with simpler electronic devices or work in their own fields of interest: democracy, environment, homework and community arrangements.
Eurodesk
The Eurodesk office is open for all youths between 13-30 years. We offer information about the Erasmus+ programme which include Youth exchanges and European voluntary service (EVS). We regularly help to send Swedish young people to go on both EVS and youth exchanges. The City of Molndal also has a long history of hosting EVS-volunteers from all over Europe.
Web:
The city of Molndal
The Molndal Youth council Facebook
Lindome youth center Instagram
View a brochure from the youth centers in Molndal here.
View a brochure about the community work here.
LGBT- lab
The LGBT-lab is a group formed by and for youths that identify with homo, bi, queer, transgender or non-normative- sexuality. It’s for youths between 13-26 years and has been a very successful example of working with vulnerable youths. The group meets once a week and have just recently been working on their first participation at West Pride - an art and culture festival that creates safe meeting places for lgbt -people and raises the issues of norm-criticism and lgbt people’s life situation. They cook, share thoughts and experiences around lgbt and plan all sorts of activities together. The group have also been engaged in international youth exchanges and have implemented two international multilateral youth exchanges with the theme of LGBT in Sweden (2015) and in Israel (2016).
Youth Council
The Youth Council of Mölndal has been created to give young people the opportunity and tools to influence their everyday lives and to create a fun and meaningful leisure time. The youth council strives to create a dialogue and find communication channels between young people, politicians and other decision-makers in Mölndal. All youths in Mölndal between 13-19 years are welcome to the Youth meetings. The unit of Youth and Community work in Mölndal is also working on establishing a youth policy action plan for the city. The program aims to find a way of working in a structured and clear way with the child and youth perspective in the city.
Mölndal Youth Editorial Project
is a project under the city of Mölndal with guidance from the Göthenburgo association.
The purpose of the editors is to bring the inhabitants and places closer to each other. We want to accomplish this by showing up important places and events in Mölndal, so that the new one in the city can easily get information and get important information. We do this through movies in an accessible and democratic way. The editors consist of six young people living in Mölndal, which in the autumn of 2016 were trained in film-making and film editing. In 2017, the editors will train new editors.
A film from the Molndal youth editorial office (partly in English).