European Youth in Need – New Answers Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Youth in Need – New Answers

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: Access for disadvantaged; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

The proposed 36-month project “European Youth in Need – New Answers” is carried out by six institutions of youth social work from Germany, Slovenia, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and Poland.The main objective of the partnership is to promote European cooperation and exchange of “good practice” in order to successfully integrate young people, who have lost the connection to the minimum supply in society and work. Hence all over Europe, there are numerous initiatives with troubled and marginalised youth, and bringing together these resources and Know-How at European level is a major aim of the project.The work programme comprises six partner conferences, in which also youth with fewer opportunities shall participate. According to the individual profile of the host organisation in the respective country, the conference will have an overall theme related to empowerment of youth in need.
In each of the six participating countries, various aspects specific to each country were discussed 1. Ireland: Therapeutic Living Communities – Salesian examples of successful format in group care of difficult young people. 2. Belgium: Families and their development opportunities in dealing with problematic young people 3. Slovenia: Circus education and other creative and artistic tools for the discovery and development of youth resources 4. Poland: boarding schools: How to prevent social crises by preventive measures? 5. Spain: Youth unemployment – new holistic concepts 6. Germany: New youth centers for disadvantaged youth – From individual help to networking. The Irish partners, as hosts of the first conference, exemplary contributed to the analytical and professional quality, including the setting of standards for accommodation in relation to familiarity. The Belgian partners showed us the advantage of systemic view in dealing with children and adolescents from risky family relationships in excellent method trainings. Slovenia offered us an example of a pedagogical plan, which was to be read as spontaneous action as a direct, improvised response to problematic situations and expanded our pool of methods by a playful dimension. The Polish partners, whose clients came more from a rural environment, proved while the conference meeting a tremendous ability to learn to adapt their previous methods and educational practices for their area. They have had an impressive quality of implementation, and in the daily work with delinquent young people exemplified the positive effect of an unconditional acceptance and how important the unconditional recognition of young people for the further education process can be. The Spanish competencies may be briefly summarized as: youthfulness and femininity. Those attributes were very helpful for the differentiated overall development of all projects and often provided impulses with regard to determination, dynamics and flexibility. As an applicant responsible for overall monitoring, the Germans had developed this European initiative. In doing so, they placed increased value on the ideas of “empowerment” and saw themselves and the five other partner organizations as a learning organization. The final event was the theoretical starting signal of an ongoing project in the sense of working with marginal young people.
The project structure we have set ourselves clearly has the potential to foster further development: the cornerstones of approaching a client target group with different methods and approaches, in order to highlight the complexity of the problems, but also those of the solution approaches, was innovative and educational at the same time. The idea of ​​giving a representative aid or solution approach to partners from different European countries also promoted the multi-dimensional and holistic understanding of our helper culture. The project approach of making the practice tangible on the ground and presenting it to experts from other countries has not only proved its worth, but has also added a new dimension: the participation of the “concerned” young people themselves. This model is made to transfer multicultural education into follow-up projects for young people on the margins of society or bilateral partner projects. Another special feature of the project “European Youth in need – new answers”, namely the inclusion of a political dimension, the model of multipliers, which involved around 90 professional persons and about 30 young people from six countries, and the combination of intensive work and cultural units contributed to the success of the cooperation and will be trendsetting for further cooperation.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 109335 Eur

Project Coordinator

DEUTSCHEN PROVINZ DER SALESIANER DON BOSCOS & Country: DE

Project Partners

• FEDERACION DE PLATAFORMAS SOCIALES PINARDI
• Zavod Salesianum, OE Skala
• Salezjanskie Stowarzyszenie Wychowania Mlodziezy o. Rzepczyno
• Cunamh Teoranta
• Jeugdhulp Don Bosco Vlaanderen vzw