EasierTransitions Helping Hands Erasmus Project

Project Title

EasierTransitions Helping Hands

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Gender equality / equal opportunities; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Project Summary

The focus of the Easier Transitions Helping Hands project was on the sharing, developing and transferring of mentoring best practices in the participating countries. NGOs from the UK, Latvia, Poland, Slovenia and Spain, all working with young people came together so they could better support young people, empower youth workers andto increase their capacity to work across the EU and in partnership.

The five partners predominantly worked with young people. These organisations were
Wonder Foundation: a small UK charity supporting the education of women and girls. Mentoring (the theme of this project) is one of the pillars fundamental to their theory of change
CANFRANC: a local charity from Zaragoza, Spain, with a long track record of supporting young people. They had never used mentoring as a formal tool. They were very interested in using it as a way to develop young people’s aspirations into realities. They work inclusively with local and refugee as well as migrant young people.
SURSUUM an Slovenian charity working with refugee, gypsies and disadvantaged young people.
KAC based in Latvia has been working with young people for the past 10 years. KAC works with young people both able and disabled and has done a lot to capacity build youth workers and professionals supporting Dawn Syndrome children and young people.
MS SKALA working to give young women tools in times of transition through non formal learning methods in Poland.

The young people they work with have with the following needs:
– Social Isolation
– Lack of resources
– Poor mental wellbeing which has a negative impact on their self esteem and their ability to see and plan a future.
– Refugees
– gypsies

Mentoring provides room for bespoke solutions to individual problems. Mentoring has proved to be very effective in the UK as a way of supporting YP from deprived backgrounds to identify and achieve their goals; to help them in transitions and as an empowerment tool to help them become better citizens and more ready for work. Wonder (a member of the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation and of the European Mentoring Group) had an established mentoring programme and had developed and tested youth work mentoring in several regions in the UK.

The other European partners were previously using informally mentoring in their work but as a result of this project now have a developed,strategic programme and portfolio of high quality, training materials that they can use in their own organisations and share with other youth work deliverers in their country.

Objectives

1. Train 25 youth workers across the 5 partners to recruit & train mentors and effectively evaluate the effect of mentoring by observing, naming and measuring outcomes.
2. Over 12 months,100 YP participate in the mentoring programme across the five partner countries.
3. 5 partners contribute to the development of a mentoring toolkit to be made available open source online translated into the relevant languages.
4. Increased international perspective and cooperation amongst 15 YP who have limited experience of people from different cultures through participating in an EU project as members of the countries steering groups.
5. To raise awareness, knowledge and skills of of mentoring to support integration of YP with fewer opportunities into society and to ease life transitions.

Each partner ran a pilot mentoring programme using mentoring to support YP but each partner’s unique experiences with YP means that all the partners are well placed to share ideas on how to effectively work with YP facing barriers on defining and achieving goals, overcoming setbacks as well starting to build the networks that are crucial to establishing a career. YP start to develop a global outlook, increasingly relevant in the job market today. Together, we aim to increase the positive impact of mentoring in supporting YP’s personal and social development, boosting the employability of YP and youth workers skills by taking this approach to youth work.

The results of the project have been:
-Greater skills and employability of young people and youth workers in 5 NGOs
-Excellent resource available and use friendly to expand mentoring and befriending as approaches and tools to many other NGOs in EU and beyond
the long term impact
-A well informed youth sector and better prepared youth workers that can support vulnerable young people through the effective use of mentoring
-the facilitation of skills training for youth workers and young people on th benefits of mentoring
-increased youth aspirations and employability in regional communities using social media and ICT tools.

The project has been a success as the different partners feel empowered and motivated. They have launched projects among themselves. they have been able to support young people and retain good volunteers and staff and have raised their national profile as a result of this partnership.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 141855 Eur

Project Coordinator

WONDER FOUNDATION & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Fundación Canfranc
• Malopolskie Stowarzyszenie Skala
• Biedriba Kopienas Attistibas Centrs (KAC)
• FUNDACIJA SURSUM DRUSTVO ZA IZOBRAZEVANJE IN KULTURO