Connecting Youths Erasmus Project

Project Title

Connecting Youths

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Romas and/or other minorities

Project Summary

Need noticed by this project partners is reflected in statistics. As EU Youth Report 2017 states, only 3% of youth (EU28) have stayed abroad for the purpose of volunteering for longer than 1 month. Situation in participating countries is no better: CZ 3%, HU7%, SK 3% and PT 1%. There is still a huge percentage of people who have never had participated actively in their communities.

Goal is to increase competences of youth workers from 4 NGOs in CZ, HU, SK and PT to reach marginalised groups of young people, involve them in NGOs and communities’ activities, be able to apply different working methodologies with different groups of young people.

Objectives:
O1. To equip youth workers from 4 NGOs in CZ, HU, SK and PT with competences useful to reach marginalised groups of young people.
O2. To increase competences of youth workers to decide upon and apply different, most efficient methodologies when working with different target groups with focus on digital tools and social media.
O3. To involve young people facing specific fewer opportunities in project activities and afterwards.

Participants:
-of transnational meetings – 2 key members of each NGO (8 in total) one of them having specific expertise relevant to topic of this project and other to be experienced project manager.
-of short-term joint staff training events – youth workers from each NGO, 4/country, 16 in total.
-of blended mobility of young people – young people aged 16-22 facing specific fewer opportunities (youth from minorities and youth having educational difficulties, both coming from rural areas), 10/country.

Activities:
C1 – training in CZ, 4L is responsible for logistics. Topic is working with youth coming from minorities in/from rural areas, responsible OS and 4L.
C2 – training in PT, CJE is responsible for logistics. Topic of this training is working with young people having educational difficulties in/from rural areas (responsible INK and CJE).
C3 – blended mobility in SK, responsible for logistics OS. Aim of it is to gather young people from minorities or having educational difficulties all coming from rural area and to increase their motivation and self-confidence, inclusion and engagement, sense of belonging, intercultural understanding and tolerance, common European values, critical thinking and problem-solving skills as well as to prepare for follow-up activities.

Also, there will be 3 transnational meetings and 3 sets of follow-up activities after each training, final set of dissemination activities.

Results:
After each short-term staff mobility and blended mobility, we will have follow-up activities in each country directly related to the topic we were tackling during activities. During follow-up activities we aim to reach 90 young people per country. This makes total 360 young people, half of which (180) we aim to be facing fewer opportunities – youth from minorities, having educational difficulties who live in/are from rural areas.
Expected number of young people reached was estimated according to the size of the community NGOs are operating in.
We are going to prepare booklet in e-form with follow-up activities results and methods used to achieve them. Content, for instance, being the following “thanks to follow-up activities to work with minorities, OS NGO reached x young people from Hungarian minority by using x methods and practices + detailed description how to apply these methods in practice”. This booklet will not be entirely educational material, but more like sharing what we did, what we found the most efficient and how others could apply it.

Impact:
We expect this project to contribute to raising inclusion in all 4 communities and engagement of young people facing fewer opportunities into communities life. More youth will be aware of Erasmus+ and its opportunities, non-formal education, its benefits. NGOs will reach more marginalized groups (youth from minorities, with educational difficulties in/from rural areas), more youth will be involved in community and NGOs activities which will results in many different competences increased, including key competences of these young people.
We are confident with help of our fellow foreign NGOs we will spread word around Europe about need to work individually with young people facing different fewer opportunities, i.e. methods that are efficient and suitable to reach out for minorities may not work with young people having educational difficulties and vice versa. We will share project results (how many young people facing fewer opportunities were reached in each country and which methods and practices were used) with fellow NGOs who could act as multipliers of our project results. We will also involve local authorities in follow-up activities to foster possible future collaboration on more systematic level to raise inclusion of young people in rural areas who come from minorities or have educational difficulties.

Project Website

https://fourlinks.org/our-projects/connecting-youths/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 81799 Eur

Project Coordinator

FOUR LINKS Z.S. & Country: CZ

Project Partners

• OBCIANSKY SPOLOK
• IFJUSAGI NOMAD KLUB NONPROFIT KFT
• CJE – CLUBE DE JOVENS EUROPEUS