The project titled "Wake up! Intensification of non-formal youth education in Lobez commune with the help of international partnerships' strategics" will be implemented in Łobez Commune, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, in the Polish-German border region. The area is characterized by high level of unemployment, as well as economic, cultural, educational and social negligence. Enormous stagnation has caused migration of young people to big cities in search of an alternative; they seek educational and professional opportunities. Non-formal education and its importance for the development of youth is a term which is unknown here, also for several non-profit entities existing in the area. It is necessary to establish and strengthen networking of these organizations for one common objective, for development of young people of the region. The project's objective is to improve quality of education, training and work with the youth, by means of enrichment of education process with non-formal learning methods and entrepreneurship, developed for the needs of inhabitants of the Łobez Commune region in international partnership. The objective is to be achieved through transfer of knowledge and experience of the partnerorganizations from the three countries; through a number of actions leading to creation of a strategy for development of non-formal education for the needs of the Commune; preparation of a compendium of methods and tools that can be used in work and instructions activating an accelerator youth entrepreneurship in rural areas. The implementers' aspiration is to prepare the production documents (intellectual results) to enable their further transfer and implementation in any other rural area facing similar problems. This guidelines, along with development of stable cooperation between key subjects in the region and adequate dissemination will ensure long-term benefits. Thanks to the direct involvement of youth in creation of results through short mixed (physical and virtual) mobilities of an international character, the project activities lead to development of their key competencies, among others: language and digital skills, as well s entrepreneurship. Activating methods will be used, among others: talks with the natives in order to establish a history of the site (an inter-generational aspect), setting the tourist trail, using (under thesupervision of a specialist) resources of offices and archives. As far as the aspect of entrepreneurship is concerned, the young people will visit an existing Polish-German pupils company. All of these activities will be monitored by two expert institutions from Poland and Germany (Bonhoeffer Haus and Schloss Trebnitz). Their extensive experience in activities accomplished in the borderarea within the frames of the Polish-German Youth Cooperation has resulted in gaining the status of the so-called 'formative institution'. Some participants living in Łobez Commune belongs to a group at risk of social exclusion andearlier dropping out of the educational system. All participants (aprox. 40 people) will be in the age about 13-16 years (junior high school). Their German colleagues will be mostly recruited from the group of emigrants with a polish roots. International cooperation of the participating organizations will also bring benefits to these organizations through their internationalization andprofessionalization. Implementation of the project´s aims will have a strong influence on the policy of the commune in the subject of education of young people, filling up the gap of existing offer with non-formal education. Many entities of the commune willexperience this impact, some of them will turn into the members of local, regional and international networks. Łobez commune will get a chance to become a model area for a youth participation.
The project ‘Wake Up! Promoting Non-formal Education of Youth in Łobez Commune through International Strategic Partnerships’ was carried out in the Polish-German border region in the West Pomeranian Voivodship. The organisations and institutions taking part worked towards a common goal: supporting the development of young people in the region by improving the quality of local education, training and youth work. The way to achieve it was by introducing non-formal teaching into local education processes, using methods devised together by international project partners to meet the needs of the local population. This goal was reached thanks to partner organisations from three countries, who contributed their knowledge and experience: Bonin Foundation from Poland, D Bonhoeffer International Centre for Studies and Events (Polish expert), Polish-German Initiative for Cultural Cooperation agitPolska from Berlin, the Association of the Trebnitz Castle Education and Exchange Centre (German expert), and Richter Foundation (Dutch expert). The partners were selected so that each of them would contribute something different to the project, to achieve a synergistic effect. They are experienced in non-formal and intercultural teaching, fostering civic responsibility and participation, and organising cultural events. Most of them also deal with volunteering and entrepreneurship, which, during the project, led to exchanging ideas and experiences concerning agency as a key factor of youth work. Thanks to this cooperation, we prepared two complementary publications which can be regarded as the intellectual outcome of the project: a model strategy for developing non-formal education in Łobez Commune and a non-formal education manual called ‘A Guide to Pedagogy of Freedom’. The guide presents the idea of non-formal education and the work methods used by development facilitators in a novel way, including short training films accessible via QR codes. Hyperlinks present in the digital version of the guide allow instant access to these teaching aids. The guide is meant for teachers, trainers and other youth workers. It includes practical instructions for using non-formal teaching methods and tools, and describes the desired effects. All the suggested methods were tested with young people during two international summer events called ‘An Expedition into the Past and the Future’. Apart from staff training in new technologies, the youth exchanges constituted the main project activities. The influence of the project was visible already during the promotional events, such as a conference in Łobez (Poland) and Trebnitz (Germany), the Wake Up! festival prepared by the youth to mark the end of the second exchange, and the film & photo exhibition at Łobez Cultural Centre. Thanks to it, local authorities on both sides of the border became interested in the results of the project. The self-government of Łobez Commune changed its outlook on education, and the role of the Youth Town Council in Łobez increased. Łobez Commune became a model example for implementing new forms of youth work. Following local modifications, the model can be introduced in any area with similar socioeconomic conditions. Owing to the fact that the project was carried out by an international team, long-term benefits for all the project partners became evident already during the stage of disseminating information about the results. Exchanging knowledge and experiences had a positive impact on the potential of each of the organisations. Preparing guidelines in form of a model strategy for rural areas and an instruction manual mark the beginning of change in the way non-formal education is perceived. The achieved results will make it possible to introduce non-formal teaching methods or modify existing ones in the long run, acting within the framework of broadly defined European non-formal education. This innovative approach to methodology was possible thanks to abandoning programme-focused thinking in favour of participation and self-organisation. Numerous discussions about youth work, exploring topics such as group dynamics, group processes, leadership styles, a culture of dispute resolution, applying consensus or familiarising oneself with one’s surroundings, allowed everyone to review their ways of working and to learn new skills. A good choice of partners and teachers combined with a possibility to test the proposed solutions initiated a process of dynamic change, supported by freedom thinking, for all participants of this experimental project. Thanks to it we also came up with ideas for further cooperation and the ways to introduce non-formal education into young people’s everyday lives – all according to the motto ‘the sky is the limit’.