Our projects
Creating EU Villages
Action Type: Small-scale partnerships in youth
Countries Covered: 🇦🇹 Austria 🇮🇹 Italy 🇭🇺 Hungary
Summary
Objectives
Creating EU Villages aims to bring more opportunities and European values into remote areas which used to be left behind when it comes to youth work. Rural youth will be empowered to create their own youth clubs to gather and run activities, as well as youth-led info desks to support their peers and raise overall participation. Those working with rural youngsters will receive useful tools to successfully reach their target group and their communities will benefit from increased opportunities.
Activities
We will conduct a research among rural youth, youth workers and institutions in order to explore the particular difficulties they face. The outcomes will feed a Guide with concrete guidelines for youngsters on how to create a youth club or info desk and how to manage it, as well as on how to raise their participation.
We’ll run local seminars, webinars and round-tables, increasing the youngsters’ know-how and connections to local stakeholders. Good practices will be shared during final seminar.
Impact
We expect to gather the voices of rural youth and those working with them, subsequently understanding their struggles and being able to create a comprehensive Guide which will empower many youngsters to create their own info desks and youth clubs and improve youth workers’ approach to the needs of rural youth. The implementation of the project will boost rural youth’s participation, connection to local stakeholders and NGOs as well as the visibility of the obstacles they face.
Partners
- Nemzetközi Kulturális Kapcsolatokért Szövetség 🇭🇺 Hungary
- TDM 2000 INTERNATIONAL 🇮🇹 Italy
International projects
🇹🇷 United for NEET
Type of project: Mobility of youth workers
Countries covered: 🇹🇷 Türkiye 🇬🇪 Georgia 🇦🇱 Albania 🇧🇦 Bosnia & Herzegovina 🇦🇲 Armenia 🇫🇷 France 🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇴 Romania 🇦🇹 Austria 🇪🇸 Spain 🇷🇸 Serbia 🇭🇺 Hungary 🇵🇹 Portugal 🇺🇦 Ukraine 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan
Location: Bursa, Türkiye
Summary
Objectives
For different reasons, not all young people can be fully involved in the labour market. There is a category of youth that is neither in employment nor in education and training (“NEETs”). Young people who are neither in employment nor in education or training are at risk of becoming socially excluded – individuals with income below the poverty-line and lacking the skills to improve their
economic situation. Unlike for unemployment or employment, there is no international standard for the definition of NEETs. Eurostat, the International Labour Organization and certain other organizations have adopted the following definition of the NEET: the population of a given age group and sex who is not employed and not involved in further education or training.
At the European level, the label NEET has an immediate value as an additional indicator of unemployment and youth marginalization and disengagement. Because they are neither improving their future employability through investment in skills nor gaining experience through employment, NEETs are particularly at risk of both labour market and social exclusion.
In 2018, according to Eurostat, 16,5 % of the 20-34 olds in the EU were neither in employment nor in education and training (‘NEETs’). The proportion of young people neither in employment nor in education and training in the first quarter of 2022 ranged from 7.3 in France to 16.5 percent in Portugal.
If we talk about the countries participating in this contact making seminar, then the situation is as follows. In 2017, among young people aged 20-34, the highest level was in Turkey (33,2%!), Hungary (17,0%) Finland (13,1%). With this contact making seminar (CMS) we want to establish national and regional cooperation of organizations directly working with youth in order to reduce the number of NEET young people and to open for them the world of youth opportunities, including Erasmus + Program.
We want to focus on two important aspects of cooperation:
1) National cooperation. Very often, youth organizations working in one country compete among themselves for access to the main target group – young people, forgetting that we all have one main mission – to support young people and this is not a business where we have to be the competitors. We want to create an atmosphere of mutual assistance and understanding in the context of involving young people in a social society.
2) Regional / International cooperation. Each country is unique in different contexts, including in the field of youth work. At the same time, as practice shows, countries that are geographically close have similar problems, so together we can think over qualitatively new solutions to existing issues and get an additional synergy effect. Therefore, we proposed to be participants for organization from neighbouring countries, like Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia; Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia and other countries from all over the Europe.
The main aim of the contact making seminar “Regional Cooperation” is to develop national, international and regional cooperation among the youth workers in order to share experiences and knowledge on working with NEET youth and their engagement in a dialogue to foster the EU social cohesion.
The objectives are:
• to create space for sharing different realities, exchanging experiences and good practices about the work with NEET youth and youth at risk of social exclusion;
• to develop necessary practical materials (brochure with recommendations how to involve NEET youth to the full social life) for further dissemination among the youth workers and other interested stakeholders;
• to promote youth social integration and involvement to foster the EU social cohesion.
• to foster networking among participants and create space for project building, especially in
Erasmus+ context;
• to increase participants’ competences to disseminate learning achievements and to explore the
possibilities for developing national and regional cooperation in the field of youth work;
• to strengthen participants and organisations competences and capability in youth work and
international dimension and cooperation.
At EU level, NEETs are considered to be one of the most problematic groups in the context of youth unemployment. The main topics of the project are based on the principles of the Europe 2020 Strategy, Education and Training 2020 (ET 2020) and article 2 of the “Treaty on the EU”. The aims and objectives of the project come in the high resonance of Erasmus+ objectives in youth
field generally and Key Action 1 particularly, since the project will foster quality improvements in youth work and youth unemployment, as well as enhance the capacity of youth workers by providing pathways back into education and training for NEETs as well as enabling their contact with the labour market.
Activities
CMS will take place in Bursa, on 5-11 May 2023 and will gather together 33 youth workers,
youth leaders and educators from 15 different Program countries: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Turkey, Hungary, France, Austria, Finland, Albania, Spain, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Portugal, Romania In order to establish cooperation both at the regional and national level, we will have 2 participants from each organization and from Hungary, Turkey, Armenia by 3 (totally 33 people, including 2 Trainers and 1 logistics/coordinator.
The programme of the CMS will be in the framework of non-formal education, using an interactive
and participative approach. The seminar will provide the space to exchange knowledge and
experience about working with NEET youth and will engage the organizations to constructively
contribute in this topic.
The methodology in the project is the result of a common discussion among the project partners on
the base of the objectives, the values and ideas that the project is intended to promote.
During the project participants will acquire communicative skills, self-presentation skills, cultural
awareness, mutual understanding, solving problems, trust and respect towards different cultures.
They will become more aware of the essence of youth work from the psychological and sociological
aspect; will learn how to manage their own abilities and how to help others in this sphere.
We will try to create a space to learn and share about analysing our previous project experiences and then create a learning environment in which we can practice and test the best way to include learning in every part of the project cycle.
The project has its logical structure. First of all, we want to come to a common understanding at the
same level about the relevance of the problem of youth social exclusion and the need to work with
NEET young people. Further, we want to go deeper to the topic of using youth work as an effective
tool for prevention of social exclusion among the youth on local, national, regional and international
levels. And for this we will take into account next key pillars:
– Who? We will begin with the main question, who is a youth worker, what competencies he/she
should have. What are our goals and motivations as individuals and professionals. We will also talk
about who are the NEET young people and why they are in risk of social exclusion.
– Where? We have different realities about youth in the risk of social exclusion and NEET youth in
different countries, as well as our own ways, how we work with them within our organization. We will
share our observations, relying on our own experience.
– How? We will prepare brochure with recommendations how to involve NEET youth to the full social
life and better integrate them, opening up a world of youth opportunities, including Erasmus +
Program.
– What’s next? Since we want our work to be sustainable, we will develop a strategy for sharing
knowledge at the local and national level (future workshops as a dissemination activities) and at the
regional and international level (ideas for future joint projects).
After each activity there will be time for reflection sessions which will help participants in analyzing
their involvement and gained knowledge. Being such a diverse intercultural group, we will create a
space to exchange the practices of their own countries, share realities about the NEET youth and
social exclusion, to explore other cultures and different styles of work.
Non-formal education will empower youth workers to set up their own projects, step by step, where
they are at the centre of the learning activity, feel concerned, get self-confidence and as result,
develop capacities and skills.
Finally, all objectives based on developing attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding of these
skills in order to better assist youth workers in their personal and professional development and go
more global on the level of organizations and the whole region as well.
Impact
Working with young people at risk of social exclusion, marginalized and NEET youth and is a very
important topic, common to all NGOs, regardless of how long they work in the field of youth work.
We’re welcome the participation of youth workers with fewer opportunities, especially economic and
geographical ones. The youth worker may not be officially employed in an organization, but it is a
person who wants to work and develop in this field. We are also happy to welcome participants from
peripheral regions, small towns or villages, urban problem areas. No one will be the subject of
discrimination.
In addition to the opportunity to develop the competence of youth workers, as outcome will create the
brochure with practical recommendations on how to involve NEET youth to the full social life and
better integrate them, opening up a world of youth opportunities, including Erasmus + Program,
which will be published in all web-pages of partners as well as on SALTO portal for common use of
youth workers from different countries and disseminated for other interested stakeholders.
At the very end of the seminar, a Press conference will be organized inviting the main stakeholders
responsible for youth and civil society cooperation in Hungary and the regions. Participants will have
a chance to share their outcomes from the seminar and promote the benefits of the European
cooperation in youth field.
One of the main Erasmus+ objectives is a clear recognition and validation of the personal skills and
qualifications on the international scale, as much as within the educational sphere. In the end of the
project each participant will receive a Youthpass certificate that confirms their participation in the
CMS.
After returning home, participants will be invited to conduct two workshops: one for their colleagues –
youth workers. The second is for the youth with whom they work, to disseminate the knowledge they
have gained about the NEET youth, using methods of achieving social inclusion through the
multicultural aspect of perception.
In the future, we plan to continue to stay in touch with partners and the quantity (and quality) of
further joint projects (especially under Erasmus+ Program) at the national and international level will
become for us an indicator of how successful the seminar was in the long term perspective.
Each participant will bring a multiplying effect of their local societies– sending organization, youth
with whom they are working, family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and local media. In this way,
the project objectives will be disseminated to the personal connections. The main value lies in the
fact that participants in the CMS will receive effective mechanisms and tools that can be used in
various spheres of life, so they can help not only their colleagues who specialize in youth work, but
also broader target groups.
An important result will be that youth workers will be able to include in their work more young people
with the risk of social exclusion and NEET youth. Specifically for this category of young people it will
be given a workshop after returning, and in the future it is planned their active inclusion in the social
life of the organization. We plan to involve at least 80 youngsters with fewer opportunities to the local
workshops after this CMS.
In addition, organizations will be able to share the acquired knowledge with other organizations
working with young people (social centers, minority’s communities etc).
The project is expected to provide reliable network of organizations for further cooperation and development. Knowing partners who share their values, it will be easier for organizations to cooperate and implement projects of a qualitatively new level in future. We believe that we need to move systematically, so we decided to start to establish cooperation with the countries of our region, and then move on.
At the same time, through social media and distribution of project’ materials (brochure with recommendations how to involve NEET youth to the full social life, photos, short video, articles of participants etc) the public of the project will not be limited only by the participants’ countries. The impact of the project will be felt at the European level by promoting European values, youth
activities through the Erasmus+ Program and recognition of youth work among different
stakeholders. The CMS objectives have specific outcomes as giving participants new skills and competences in working with NEET youth; communicating and cooperating with participants on national and regional / international level.