Competence for Inclusion in International Youth Work Erasmus Project

Project Title

Competence for Inclusion in International Youth Work

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Access for disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The project allowed the partner organisations and their partners, volunteers and communities to share experiences related to their work focused on increasing inclusiveness of young people, but also of children and adults. As a youth project, we focused our attention on sharing experience on inclusive youth participation to social life, including forms of increasing young people participation to the faith and religious life of their communities, increasing gender equality, supporting better participation and recognition of LGBTIQ+ young people in the social and political life, better access and integration in all social life and activities of young people with disabilities and of all young people irrespective of the wealth, ethnicity or residency (urban or rural).
The project followed its aim through 2 types of activities: (A) learning activities, represented by 5 study visits and (B) an online platform / website.
Each study visit included 2 activity components: (1) visits to projects and institutions in order to get an idea on the practice in the visited country/city and how disabled young people, LGBTIQ+ youth, young people from various religious groups and with different ethnicities can participate to the social life without obstacles and (2) discussions, debates and exercises around best practices on how to enhance inclusiveness in a sustainable way when planning Erasmus+ projects and in particular Erasmus+ international youth projects.
The project was possible due to the cooperation of five partner organizations from: Romania, Finland, Slovenia, Portugal and Scotland. The strength of the project was given by the experience of each of the partner organisations in working on inclusive youth work, having each of them very different and particular approaches and target groups. These main target groups that are out main focus are: women and girls (receiving a special attention from RKI in Finland), LGBTIQ+ youth (the target group of Pride Ljubljana in Slovenia), rural and Roma youth (the main target group of CDCD in Romania), young people with disabilities (main beneficiaries of projects implemented by BLOOM in Portugal), young people from minority religious groups (the target group of Interfaith Scotland).
During the project period, five learning activities have been organized as well as three transnational project meetings to allow partners to coordinate their activities. Each organisation in the partnership had good practices to share and the practices and methods used in partner countries varies from organisation to organisation which assured a large variety of the learning outcomes of the project. The 8 key competences for lifelong learning have been considered in the design of activities.
75 unique beneficiaries – youth workers or youth leaders – have been directly involved in the international study visits and over 3000 people have been involved in different parts of the project, including participating to workshops and other activities organised by the participants to study visits during the Interfaith Week (Scotland, November 2017), Ljubljana Pride Week (June 2018), in schools in Romania during the study visit in Romania in November 2018.
The project involved youth workers, youth leaders, professionals and volunteers working with young people from each partner country. Most of them have a high level of expertise and/or in-depth and first-hand experience in involving young people from discriminated groups in local, national and international activities. Through the input of these youth workers on the project generated good practices shared amongst the youth workers participating the learning activities. These youth workers are working with the 5 partner organisations and/or with other organisations in their national networks. Therefore, one of the project results have been better practice networks for young people’s inclusion. Moreover, junior staff and volunteers have been inspired to be able to work with more inclusive approach and have better results on their daily work.
At the second level, based on the experienced shared by the youth workers participating in the learning activities, selected as presented in the application, from the partner organisation and beyond, form other youth work organisation, two dissemination tools ensure a widen the impact of the project: (1) the online platform sharing good practices and the videos created during the study visits and (2) the direct dissemination made by the participants to learning activities, encouraged and empowered to share their experience with other youth workers in their networks. Regarding the online platform: it functions at the same time as a dissemination and learning tool, and tells stories of different youth workers, youths and organizations that works for inclusion in all partner countries and it gives simple guidelines for the youth workers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 117785 Eur

Project Coordinator

ASOCIATIA CENTRUL PENTRU DEZVOLTARE COMUNITARA DURABILA (CDCD) & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Interfaith Scotland
• BLOOM Associacao Socio Cultural
• RAUHANKASVATUSINSTITUUTTI RY INSTITUTET FOR FREDSFOSTRAN RF
• Drustvo Parada ponosa