Map of opportunities: Youth information guide Erasmus Project

Project Title

Map of opportunities: Youth information guide

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: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

The aim of our project is “Developing the conditions for the acquisition of soft skills of young people and youth workers and fostering cooperation between those working with young people through an innovative and accessible online tool”, which will be the online portal ‘Map of opportunities: Youth Information Guide’. We start from the need for an increasing demand for soft skills among young people, who are currently gaining little in formal education. In their many years of research, informal education programs are a unique tool for personal and professional participation in life. Its most important characteristics include partnership, non-evaluative approach, experiential learning, safe environment and, last but not least, multiculturalism and respect for otherness.
Together with the Czech partner organization, the Association for the Support of YIC Development in the Czech Republic, we have been providing information and counseling services for young people for more than 25 years, in cooperation with our member organizations. Given the increasing demand for non-formal education, we decided to take advantage of the Erasmus + program to create a common education and information tool in both countries, also available to disadvantaged groups of young people.
The main target groups are therefore: 1. youth workers, directly involved in the creation and subsequently using the portal
2.young people, directly involved and then as the target group of the actual output – Map of opportunities
3. Other TG involved: youth workers – voluntary and professional, youth policy makers – at local and national level for each country.
The methodology of the project is aimed at ensuring a “evidence based practice” approach, ie the first step will be to map the real needs of the target groups, in the form of online and offline activities, with the cooperation of a sociologist. In Step 2, we incorporate the recommendations from the survey into the creation of the portal itself. To be as accessible as possible, it will be created in the following language versions: Slovak, Czech, English and key information and areas will also be in Hungarian and Roma languages. The audiovisual works included in the project will be subtitled in these languages. The third step will be to train a team of consultants to teach users how to use the portal functions, which will be assisted by specially designed support tools. 4. An important step will be a professional marketing campaign that gets information about the new service to specific target groups. At this stage we will try to involve as many actors as possible in cooperation. The 5th step will be two major multiplication events to bring the portal closer to a mixed group of people, explain its functions, its benefits and offer cooperation in its further creation. 6. This is followed by a consultation phase where the main objective will be to attract users and explain the use of the portal. This will be done by both the participating and their member organizations through pre-trained consultants. In the 7th, final phase, we will evaluate the extent to which this tool has met our objectives and whether we have managed to meet the set indicators and also assess the impact rate.
We care about the sustainability of this instrument and its effective use, so we are planning measures that will continue to work after the project has been funded. The main one is the decentralization of portal administration, where registered users will autonomously manage the content of their accounts and participating organizations will act as a reviewer and supervisor. The portal must comply with security measures, the protection of GDPR, and must not violate human rights. To this end, controllable rules will be created and the portal will be integrated into a network of online tools where suspicious content can be reported.
We consider it important to have an impact on the knowledge of non-formal education, creating and exploiting the conditions for cooperation between youth workers across sectors, and the acquisition of competencies through free educational tools directly on the portal, in five different language versions. The efficient use of the portal will be unique in the EU and thus rank among the examples of good practice.

Project Website

http://www.readyforlife.tips

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 84081 Eur

Project Coordinator

ZDRUZENIE INFORMACNYCH A PORADENSKYCH CENTIER MLADYCH V SLOVENSKEJ REPUBLIKE & Country: SK

Project Partners

• Asociace pro podporu rozvoje informacnich center pro mladez v CR, z.s.