New beginnings/how many horizons have you crossed without noticing Erasmus Project

Project Title

New beginnings/how many horizons have you crossed without noticing

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 : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Inclusion – equity; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

This call was emerged from the current situation, as youth work is seriously affected by the current dynamics. We noticed that COVID-19 was an additional burden to the everyday challenges that youth workers and young people from vulnerable groups are facing. Empowerment, inclusion, active participation, and well-being are some of the goals that we constantly strive towards achieving with our youth work. We believe that we need to focus on this with the power of creativity of our methods, so we can reinforce self-confidence, personal growth and well-being, and social inclusion through solidarity. Our priorities go hand in hand with current needs. We possess creative and empowering methodologies that can contribute towards development and inclusion, at the same time supporting young people to look into what they do good, their own capabilities, and to empower them to be active players in society. Those methodologies are adaptable and can be used in different ways with different groups. The core of all methodologies in this project is a creative and inclusive approach.

The general objectives are:
– to raise awareness about current issues and needs in society (affected by Covid 19) through creativity (Loesje creative writing)
– to empower young people, youth workers and educators through creative and digital tools and methods (School of freedom)
– to raise awareness about mental health and wellbeing through creative methods (Transactional Analysis)
– to foster social inclusion and solidarity (intersectional solidarity)
– to foster international long-term cooperation by an exchange of good practices

Specific objectives:
– Increasing capacities of the organizations through transnational cooperation
– To train 100 youth workers and trainers with the creative tools and methods of the participating organizations

Primary target group: Youth organizations, youth workers and trainers, Youth tutors and practitioners
Secondary target group: youth from vulnerable groups

For this project, we made a structured plan for how we will implement the activities in order to reach the objectives. This plan has two sections: Internal and partners section. In the internal section are all preparations, meetings, plans, changes, improvements, selection, divisions, agreements, etc. made by the organization internal in its team. We agreed to have regular internal meetings and evaluations in order to keep our team in progress and up to date. This way we will be aware of the needs and behaviors of our own team and can follow the improvements in our own organisations. In this way, we can be a good partner and build stable and strong partnerships as organization.
The second section is the partner’s section, actually all activities we implement together. Starting with the development of this project idea, we already shared realities, needs and issues we want to improve and support and explained in which way our methodologies will be complementary and can help to equip youth workers, trainers and educators to have effective youth work by working with youth from vulnerable groups.
The 4 trainings are the most important part of this project because they will transfer knowledge, skills and tools to youth workers that will act as multipliers and test it in order to obtain feedback and assess the importance and relevance of these tools for youth work and education in general. Each training will help the participants to grown their professionalism and the quality of their work.
Trainings will provide innovative and creative methods and tools to face reality in Covid times and empower youth skills on resilience, self-awareness, communication and relational skills
Trainings will expand youth workers’ personal networks of international connections and help them to understand more each method or tool in order to use it at the local level and in other international projects. This will provide the opportunity for each partner to bring their expertise and experience and share it with the other while learning, and creating multipliers with the participants of the trainings.

The project will have a concrete impact on several levels, on the participating youth workers, on the organizations involved in the project and in the end on the target groups of youth workers with whom the participating organizations work and the secondary target group of youth in intercultural communities.
The target group of dissemination, in general, is within the field of youth work, as we want to reach actors who are willing to train their staff working directly with young people and encourage them to be active and empowered in their communities, sharing values of well-being and solidarity. Inside our partnership, we want to reach and prepare those partners with wider networks to understand the reality and gain knowledge, tools and skills to integrate transformative practices and Loesje creative text writing in addressing current issues while working with youth.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 58350 Eur

Project Coordinator

Loesje e.V. & Country: DE

Project Partners

• PeaceWorks Sweden
• ASSOCIAZIONE AGRADO – APS
• Loesje Bitola