Youth Positive Potential Erasmus Project

Project Title

Youth Positive Potential

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 school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Our project will tailor an existing educational programme – the Archipelago of Treasures – to the needs of youths aged 14-15 in each participating country. In order to be able to tailor it to the difficulties faced by this target group, LNF (Malta), Vilnius PPT (Lithuania) and Ostoja Foundation (Poland) will be compiling a survey in coordination with EIIP, the organisation which developed the Archipelago of Treasures programme. After carrying out the survey with a sample of youths within the defined age bracket, the data will be sent to EIIP for the compilation of country national reports by their specialised research analysis team. EIIP will then train members from each other participating organisation on implementing this programme in schools.

The implementation of our project will seek to contribute to counteracting issues such as early school leaving, mental health difficulties/ susceptibility to mental health problems, etc, and ensuring that the programme is tailored to the needs primarily identified in each participating country. Studies conducted by EIIP have demonstrated that multiple problems and risk behaviours are mutually correlated and have a number of common risk factors (one of the strongest risk factors is sexualisation). Implementation of the educational programme Archipelago of Treasures can combat these trends and empower students (youths) as well as school staff to address issues which arise. For more targeted results, we are aiming to reach youths aged 14-15 through school-based activities.

The project will be broken into 4 distinct phases:

• Research Study
• Adaptation and implementation of the Archipelago of Treasures Programme
• Dissemination and exploitation of research results (incl Conference)
• Project evaluation

Objectives
Our project aims to implement and disseminate an educational programme in all participating countries. This Programme is known as the Archipelago of Treasures, and it is already used by project partner EIIP in Polish schools and has been found to be highly effective. This programme offers an accessible and easy to adopt tool for the effective prevention of youth problems. In all countries we will implement this programme within five secondary schools with students aged 14-15yrs.

Archipelago of treasures aims to help youths reflect and prepare for the journey of life, the journey of life is the conscious pursuit of the most important life goals, a life vocation, thanks to which a person lives a full life, realises their talents, fulfils their deepest dreams, and chooses a mission which gives meaning to their life. based on this understanding of the ‘journey of life’ adolescence is usually not the journey itself, but an important stage of preparation, searching and choosing goals and discerning decisions. The positive impact of the programme will help youths to become more empowered and more productive thus reducing early school leaving, suicide rates, and other youth problems, whilst encouraging the use of soft skills to make youths more employable.

By the end of the project we want to reach the below objectives:

-Compile three national country reports on the problems faced by youths aged 14-15
-Empower over 1,000 youths (collectively) in Malta, Poland and Lithuania through the AoT programme
-Set up three conferences for dissemination and exploitation of the research results

Youth participants in all three countries will gain invaluable soft skills and life skills which will help them to make more responsible and educated decisions which promote self-respect and respect for others. These skills are invaluable for anyone, and will be a good basis on which to build formal education and informal education achievements and qualifications. In a work setting, soft skills such as respectfulness, responsibility and diligence are sought after by employers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 84774 Eur

Project Coordinator

Life Network Foundation Malta & Country: MT

Project Partners

• European Institute for Integrated Prevention
• Fundacja Ostoja
• Vilniaus pedagogine psichologine tarnyba