The project wants to respond to the horizontal priority: Inclusive education, training and youth as it aims to develop, by the medium of youth work, social and civic competences among the project second target: new migrants and refugees. In addition it aims to respond to the youth priority of promoting high-quality of youth work, as it is going to design, implement, test and disseminate an effective educational tool able to support youth workers in developing their daily activities and their channels of communication.Finally, the project aims to respond to the youth priority of promoting empowerment, open to cross-sectorial cooperation and active citizenship of young people, in particular of young new migrants and refugees, as it is going to support, starting from a cross-sectorial partnership and by the medium of youth work, young new migrants and refugees in their integration path. The shared partnership principle is that knowledge of the receiving society’s language, institutions, heritage is crucial for a successful integration: the aim of integration calls for efforts by the migrants to accept the basic values of the receiving society as well as for efforts by the hosting countries to accept the basic values of the new migrants and refugees.The project is going to work on two intellectual outputs: a series of comic strips focused on the project topics - EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy - and an annexed guide. The medium of the comic strips has been chosen because comics are known to be one of the most powerful and effective communication tools, above all in the youth field; the guide has been planned in order to support youth workers in their role of multi-target and multi-topic providers of non-formal learning opportunities. The guide will accompany youth workers, step by step, through the process of using comics to communicate. Throught it, youth workers will be able, without outside help, to re-process the comics and exploit them with a wide range of different target profiles (in general young people with fewer opportunities) in different contexts and starting from different topics.The intellectual outputs implementation will be improved by the partnership with the support of a multicultural youth workers representing, at the best, European multiculturalism and diversity.Starting from these core priorities and objectives, the project profile widens its horizon looking at the world around with the aim to promote effective educational tools able to get positive results with people of different backgrounds; to experience an alliance between youth workers centers, educational providers, NGO including immigration and refugee centers an public bodies on the focused issues and finally to experience and promote an innovative cross sectorial partnership (one NGO dealing with immigration issues; a social communication agency, an association whose core mission is integration and European cooperation in the youth field) able to reinforce the dialogue among highly different, but complementary entities. In addition, the multicultural and multisectoral partners profile will let the project to involve an active range of stakeholders. The project activities will take place over 20 months, in three countries, from north to south Europe: from Sweden to Spain, passing through Italy. The partnership has been build as a "melting team" made by complementary competences and expertises, background and missions in order to achieve a common goal: the willing to implement and disseminate innovative and effective educational tools tailored made on youth workers needs and their target needs. The partecipants to the project, during its whole cycle, are about 230 including also people with fewer opportunities. The participants will actively take part to a focus group phase, to the testing phase, to a series of dissemination labs in youth centers and NGOs (involving at least 100 youth workers) and to the multiplier events: - meetings for insiders"and professionals that are going to be a medium to valorize, within a multi-target network, the importance of the high quality of youth work. The project main results are the release of the project outcomes on the main OER platforms, on SALTO tools area, on the project website and on each partner's website; a strong local dissemination plan of actions supported by the most popular media among young people; the direct involvement of about 230 people; the establishment of an alliance network among all people involved in youngest education and the the development of a “word of mouth” network on the project topics. The biggest challenge of the partnership is to bring the intellectual output into the mainstream. To let the IOs and the project results to circulate and strengthen as a best practice among the Erasmus+ program, the project partners undertake to maintain the project website until the 2020.
The starting assumption of this project was that knowledge of each other’s society, culture, habits, among others, is crucial for a successful integration. The aim of integration calls for efforts by the newcomers to understand and accept the basic values of the receiving society as well as for efforts by the hosting countries to understand and accept the basic values of the new migrants and refugees. The aim of this project is to develop, by the medium of youth work, social and civic competences among the youth, local and newcomers, to European countries. In addition it aims to respond to the youth priority of promoting high quality of youth work as it has designed, implemented, tested and disseminated an effective education tool able to support youth workers in developing their daily activities and their channels of communication. Finally, the project aims to respond to the youth priority of promoting empowerment and active citizenship of young people, in particular new migrants and refugees, as it supports young new migrants in their inclusion path. Starting from these core priorities and objectives, the project profile widens its horizon looking at the world around with the aim to promote effective educational tools able to get positive results with people of different backgrounds; to experience an alliance between youth workers centres, educational providers, NGO including immigration and refugee centres and public bodies on the focused issues The partnership is a multi sector and innovative agreement among 3 diverse organizations: one ONG dealing with immigration issues (Kvinnor Soma Sverige) from Sweden, a social communication agency (Bluebook srl) from Italy and an association whose core mission is integration and European cooperation in the youth field (Integra) from Spain. Partners worked, along with stakeholders and migration and youth related organizations, in the elaboration, design, evaluation, testing, and implementation of the materials or intellectual outputs of the project. The project worked on two Intellectual Outputs: 1- A series of 15 comic strips focused on the topics: Cultural codes, habits, intercultural communication, stereotypes and prejudices, and discrimination. In dealing with these topics there’s a special attention to the following elements: Identity, Humanisation of the characters, A bidirectional approach to the process. The medium of the comic strips has been chosen because comics are known to be one of the most powerful and effective communication tools, above all in the youth field. 2- An annexed guide. The guide accompanies youth workers, step by step, through the process of using the comic strips to communicate, educate and sensitize the young target in the mentioned topics. Through it, youth workers will be able, without outside help, to re-process the comics and exploit them with a wide range of different target profiles (in general young people with fewer opportunities) in different contexts and starting from different topics. Diverse dissemination activities showed firsthand the results of the project in the shape of the comic strips and the guide: dissemination labs to reach a total of 100 youth workers and 3 multiplier events (one in each partner country) with a total of 60 participants from migrant organizations, local decision makers and young migrants and locals. Dissemination through schools network was also implemented and further workshops in the school system are the next step for the materials to be used. They are also available as pedagogical resources in Salto and Epale platforms, in the project website, websites and social networks of all partners. All the participants in the project have been benefit from the activities developed during the 20 months of the project, and it is expected that the impact will be extensive in time and upcoming projects and events as it open to and would be applied in further projects linking the comic as an artistic expression with other arts and tools as theatre, video or music.