Professionals and Youth in Partnership Erasmus Project

Project Title

Professionals and Youth in Partnership

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 addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The aim of Professionals and Youth in Partnership (PYP) was to bring together, through the development of complementary training methodologies and the creation of new and/or expanded training materials, two groups of people – professionals and youth – who were each in a unique position to have a major impact on the lives of some of the most vulnerable and at risk women and girls in the EU. Within many EU Member States there are communities originating from across the Middle East in which women and girls are vulnerable to violence emanating from harmful practices. Those at risk are most likely to be protected or helped through early intervention by (1) their peers – other young people who have been trained to be aware of and understand the issues; and know when and how they can safely offer advice and support; and (2) a range of professionals – Police, social workers, health workers, housing officers, teachers, youth workers – who have the opportunity or responsibility to intervene to protect those vulnerable to HP but who often hesitate to act due to lack of confidence, ignorance, cultural misconceptions or fear of being accused of racism or contravening religious beliefs.

PYP brought together 6 NGOs from 4 EU Member States and Turkey to work together in developing and sharing best practice in training for both groups and to work for the accreditation of training in HP as an accepted requirement for professionals and for youth peer mentors.
The partners were:
• IKWRO – Women’s Rights Organisation – United Kingdom
• Refugee Women’s Association – United Kingdom
• Türkisch-Deutscher Frauenverein e.V: (PAPATYA) – Germany
• Orient Express – Austria
• KAMER Foundation – Turkey
• Hellenic Regional Development Center – Greece

On 16th December 2014, Hellenic Regional Development Center from Greece withdrew from the project, leaving 5 NGOs from 4 EU member states and Turkey.

The partners researched and shared existing provision and practices, they developed and piloted core and country-customised methodologies, training and learning material and developed a strategy for securing accreditation with professional bodies and accreditation agencies. An innovative element of PYP was the development of Guidelines for Youth-Professional Training in Partnership. In Turkey, due to conflict, some aspects of the training were changed. Instead KAMER held house meetings and large seminars within different cities.

PYP findings and practice was the focus of a high profile transnational conference held on 1st June 2017, which highlighted the importance of training professionals and youth on harmful practices to ensure they were equipped to safely respond to cases or to provide guidance. We had 251 bookings for the conference, but on the day there were 170 attendees. The conference speakers included professionals from statutory agencies including Health, Mental Health, Law, Social Services, Police and Housing, as well as Youth Organisations and a survivor of HP.

We also held the first National Schools Conference in the UK on 18th October 2016, which focused on the training of teachers on the harmful practices, and also, on encouraging schools to develop safeguarding policies which are appropriate for detecting and responding to harmful practices. Over 130 educational professionals attended this conference. Within this conference we had quite a big focus on youth work, as we partnered with ‘Not in my Classroom’ who work against forced marriage, and ‘Youth for Change’ who are a youth group working against the harmful practices of female genital mutilation and child and forced marriage.

Throughout the project, we held various training sessions, meetings and seminars, which enabled us to reach over 13,607 people.

The longer term benefits of this project are the training we had provided to professionals and youth. This will continue to be disseminated within the organisations and youth groups to raise awareness on the issues and to provide safety to those at risk. We agreed on the need for a recognised EU-wide qualification with minimum standards. We want to see both initial, and on-going accredited training on harmful practices, within the mainstream training of every public sector profession. In working towards this, we were able to accredit the conference held on 1st June 2017 with the “CPDstandards” awarding 6 hours of Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Along with this, we are now in the process of accrediting the training material which was developed within this project.

Throughout this project we disseminated our learning through our networks, online on our organisations’ websites, social media and campaigns. This supports on-going and further learning and serves as a long term benefit as both youth and professionals are able to search on this for information on an on-going basis. All information can be found on the PYP website at, www.professionalyouthpartnership.eu.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 415149 Eur

Project Coordinator

IKWRO-Women’s Rights Organisation & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Orient Express
• Türkisch-Deutscher Frauenverein e.V:
• Refugee Women’s Association
• KAMER Foundation