Open The Doors – New Directions in NEET prevention through teacher capacity building Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open The Doors – New Directions in NEET prevention through teacher capacity building

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

• Context/background of the project;
Open the Doors operates on the principle that potential NEET youth and NEET youth are indeed able to develop strong intellectual and learning capacity, given the proper opportunities and learning settings.Therefore, to create new capacity in NEET prevention to support the learning of 21st century competences among young people, the project addressed and worked with the professional staff in NEET settings, mostly teachers, social educators and youth educators, based on the project’s 5 future-oriented methodologies: real-life learning, learning in mixed realities, working with community, entrepreneurial initiative-taking and using creative technology. We wanted the capacity building of the educators to result from the interaction between such practical experimentation and the collective reflections systematically included in the project.
The DOCUMENTATION of the project’s extensive capacity building among participating educators generated NEW KNOWLEDGE, on which formed the project’s final intellectual outcomes, offering rich didactic guidance to a wider audience of NEET prevention educators across Europe
OBJECTIUS
The main objectives of the project were:
-To create new capacity in NEET preventions by working with the professional staff in the prevention provisions, mostly teachers, social educators and youth workers.
– To innovate in the didactics of NEET prevention, linking youth interests with community needs and creating practical learning processes.
– To build capacity among NEET to re-engage in learning, community and work.
– To link this new experience to the education institutions responsible for training the new generations of teachers and youth workers.
– To produce experience-based documentation to share among education institutions in order to unify the criteria in NEET prevention.
The extensive, pan-European consortium brought together institutions working and struggling at the heart of NEET youth prevention and empowerment, professional and highly experienced knowledge creators at research level, associations with long-standing European records and solid network partners at European level. The in

COMPOSITION
The partnership was composed of practice partners from Spain, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania and the UK; knowledge partners from the UK and Holland and quality partner from Spain. The partnership composition met the original quality criteria through basing the partnership on practice partners from different countries, bringing in strong knowledge creators and supplementing the partnership with organizations experienced in networking and quality assurance.
European-ness
One of the key criteria for establishing the partnership was strong participation from NEET provisions from countries with serious NEET youth challenges.
Such countries are precisely: Spain, Hungary, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania and the UK.
This participation offered the project a solid base for authentic experimentation and change – and for creating solid and useful knowledge.
The consortium creation was based on the following profile criteria. Profile of the NEET prevention partners: worked directly in special NEET prevention facilities, or facilities in which NEET prevention is a key objective, either in late secondary or post-secondary settings,willing to participate in radical didactic change processes,able to engage a team of teachers or youth educators along the project,had the full support of the management,able to link to and share with local or regional teacher educations and/or youth worker educations or similar.
Profile of the knowledge partners:able to create valuable knowledge from the didactic experimentation and transform this knowledge into documentation and policy papers; able to link the knowledge creation to state of the art research; open to experimental knowledge creation and engaging NEET youth professionals and NEET youth as co-creators of knowledge
Profile of the quality partners: capacity to pro-actively develop, manage and implement a solid quality programme and to offer critical project management support
IMPACT
Some organizations changed the way we organize the activities with youth. They have learned to function with a new methodology that helps improve the input of young people. Teacher teams now are looking for new strategies to work with youth from the point of view of entrepreneurship.
ACTIVITIES: 4 Partners meeting and 2 seminar to reflect.
RESULT: www.openthedoors.eu and Guidelines for 21st century NEET prevention.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 151009 Eur

Project Coordinator

Associació Educativa Vall del Terri & Country: ES

Project Partners

• STICHTING EURICON
• EDUCA INTERNATIONAL, o.p.s.
• UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
• SCOALA GIMNAZIALA NR 5 PIATRA-NEAMT
• Working with Europe/Treballant amb Europa Associació
• ASSOCIACAO PARA A EDUCACAO DE SEGUNDA OPORTUNIDADE
• UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON