Focus: Quality youth work with disadvantaged young people Erasmus Project

Project Title

Focus: Quality youth work with disadvantaged young people

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: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

The partner organisations in this project decided to undertake the activities based on their previous experience with the three target groups of it – young people with chronic diseases, unemployed young people and young offenders with the aim to collect, exchange, test and improve good practices in the field of quality youth work with disadvantaged young people. Our main principle is personal development, and fulfilment which we believe should be available to every young person regardless of their background. Our mission is to provide young people with support and mentorship matched to their own needs and this is why it is important to us to have specific approach for young people with disadvantages.
The three partnering organisations, The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award – Bulgaria, The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award – Romania and EPI Mednarodno priznanje za mlade Zavod za podporo in vsestranski razvoj mladih, Slovenia are all focused on delivering mentorship programmes to young people with specific focus on personal development, volunteering, healthy lifestyle and appreciation of consistency and goal-setting. Each organisation has experience delivering the programme for young people from different disadvantaged groups and decided to exchange good practices and approaches, in order to include more young people with specific needs into the personal development programmes. The partner organisations have very similar structure but focus on different target groups – each organization trains their own youth workers (be it teachers, NGO-staff, volunteers, etc) and facilitates and supports the work of the youth workers with the young people.

The specific objectives of the project were:
1. Collection of good practices from 3 countries and developing a training modules for youth work with unemployed young people, young offenders and young people with chronic diseases.
2. Implementing the good practices in the field of youth work with unemployed young people, young offenders and young people with chronic diseases.
3. Developing a handbook, that collects the 12 good practices and training activities in the field of youth work with unemployed young people, young offenders and young people with chronic diseases, that aims to improve the quality of the youth work on national, regional and international level and promote its results and advantages.

The direct target group were the youth workers – who participated in learning activities, development of the good practices and shared their specific experience and know-how. We managed to built a sustainable pool of qualified youth workers who are capable of, motivated and eager to work with young people from mentioned 3 target grouts. Another indirect target group for this project are young disadvantaged people, more specifically unemployed, young offenders and young people with chronic diseases. The youth workers who will be working directly with them by providing them guidelines, mentoring and coaching them in the process of personal development.

In the framework of the project, the partners joined forces to design a 5day training for trainers with a specific focus on working with disadvantaged young people. Most of the sessions used in the training and in the later trainings for youth workers can be found in the Handbook (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hReH0Fo-F5DPRzvWretiuzQuW5tFeWog/view) and are available for anyone who would like to use them. What is more, the Handbook includes good practices which were tested by the partners, which can be directly applied with young people or can be adapted according to the needs of the group. Additionally, there are 54 youth workers trained in this methodology who are already mentoring young people from disadvantaged backgrounds – most of the youth workers are working with at least 2 young people in their first year as mentors and are expected to work with progressively higher numbers in hte next years.

In the long term, the Handbook with good practices and methodology will be used by the partner countries in the training of youth workers and mentors and will multiply the number of young people, engaged in personal development programmes and thus becoming independent and an integral part of their communities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 59925 Eur

Project Coordinator

Mezhdunarodna nagrada na hertsoga na Edinburg – Balgaria & Country: BG

Project Partners

• The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Romania
• MEPI Mednarodno priznanje za mlade Zavod za podporo in vsestranski razvoj mladih