YOUTH WORKERS ACADEMY Erasmus Project

Project Title

YOUTH WORKERS ACADEMY

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: Integration of refugees; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

YOUTH WORKERS ACADEMY was an educational and strategic partnership aimed at preparing a curriculum and manuals for youth workers in three areas: young people with special needs; LGBT youth; young people coming from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. The project reflected its internationality in a quality partnership of youth organizations from Turkey, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia. It also proved that it is a response to the need for youth workers from the above-mentioned countries, as they report that they often do not have enough knowledge to work with identified groups, especially in rural areas and places with fewer populations. By preparing specific learning plans – curricula and integrating them into meaningful manuals, we believe that we have made the first steps for higher qualifications of youth workers, presented them with suitable approaches to work with specific groups of young people, and consequently enable young people to get more involved in society and through them youth workers are transferring knowledge and skills in order to find themselves in a better position and raise their potential. Our overall goal was to expand the horizons of youth workers, to train them appropriately to implement the proposed curricula and to enable them to a better access to young people with fewer opportunities through the introduction of new methods of youth work in youth centres in Slovenia, Turkey, Romania and Croatia. The outcome of the project is the curriculum manual, which helps everyone who works with these three specific youth groups. The manual also includes the transfer of good practices between four countries, a visit to 28 external youth organizations, the involvement of over 200 youth workers in pilot training. Over 12 dissemination events were conducted. We started the project with a kick-off meeting and concluded with an evaluation meeting. The curriculum manual remains a lasting result of the project, and the organizations involved would like to continue with the training for youth workers after the completion of the project and, if necessary, upgrade and develop new models in the same partnership. The desire of the partnership was to gather the best team for the development of content in selected areas and in terms of the competencies and experience of the involved youth workers – experts and we believe that the latter has succeeded. For the past two years, the set of quality projects of the team has led to the goals set. New approaches in youth work developed in the project in all four countries (and wider in the EU) constitute a sustainable tool for conducting training sessions and suitable workshops for the integration of young people with special needs who, with regular and quantitative use (methods), offer good foundations for reaching the desired young people and their active inclusion in society. One of the priorities of the project was strengthening our own organizations.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 75979,17 Eur

Project Coordinator

ZAVOD MLADINSKA MREZA MAMA & Country: SI

Project Partners

• Savez gluhih i nagluhih grada Zagreba
• TURKIYE GENCLIK BIRLIGI DERNEGI
• ASOCIATIA CENTRUL PENTRU DEZVOLTARE COMUNITARA DURABILA (CDCD)