The project will share concrete measures to increase inclusive youth participation, reduce discriminatory attitudes, practices and inequality therefore enable equal and safe participation for all youth within Erasmus + programme. The project and in particular it’s learning activities and the on-line platform it will create focus on sharing best practices on how to work with different young people in an opened, inclusive and sustainable manner and how to plan and implement Erasmus + programme activities in a manner that disabled young people, LGBTIQ+ youth, young people from various religious groups and with different ethnicities can participate in it without obstacles. The project is the creation of five partner organizations and they come from different corners of Europe> Romania, Finland, Slovenia, Portugal and Scotland, being very experienced in working on inclusive youth work, but they all have different approach to it, having different target groups: women, LGBTIQ+ youth, rural and Roma youth, young people with disabilities, young people from minority religious groups. During the project period, five learning activities will be organized as well as three transnational project meetings. All the learning activities will include visits to see local actors work in practice, workshops on sharing good practices and building new approaches for inclusion, project planning, interactive daily reflections and evaluation, learning about 8 key competences and Youthpass (individual and group work, feedback rules, self-reflection) as well as sharing methodologies about how to use Youthpass as an instrument for learning and recognition of non-form for youngsters with different identities and abilities. 125 people will directly be invovled in the international activities of the project and in total 3300 people will be involved in diffeerent parts of the project. The expected results of the project are: 1. Increase of awareness on structural and institutional discriminatory practices within youth work and Erasmus + programme and disseminate knowledge how to overcome them. 2. Increase capacity (skills, knowledge and attitude) of youth workers to improve their practises and work in more inclusive manner. 3. Increase safe participation and engagement of youth from discriminated and/or with unnormative identities in Erasmus + projects. 4. Strengthen the networks of youth work organisations and equality/minority organisations The project will involve youth workers from each partner country who have a high level of expertise in involving young people from discriminated groups in local, national and international activities. Through these expert youth workers input the project will gather good practices shared amongst the youth workers participating the learning activities. Each organisation in the partnership has good practices to share. The practices and methods used in partner countries varies from organisation to organisation which will assure the learning outcomes of the project to be useful for every organisation involved and will also ensure diversification of method at the level of each organisation. Within the project we will support and inspire junior staff of the organisations to be able to work with more inclusive approach and have better results on their daily work. The project will aim to support youth workers to feel capacitated to organise more inclusive Erasmus+ projected and activities that young people with special needs and young people of minority groups feel encouraged, inspired and safe to participate in. At the second level, based on the experienced shared by the youth workers participating in the learning activities, selected as presented in the application, from the partner organisation and beyond, form other youth work organisation, two dissemination tools will ensure a widen the impact of the project: the online platform we will build and the fact that all participants in learning events will be encouraged and embowered to share their experience with other youth workers. Regarding the online platform: it will function at the same time as a dissemination and learning tool, and tells stories of different youth workers, youths and organizations that works for inclusion in all partner countries and it will give simple guidelines for the youth workers. Special attention on the visual content of the stories, examples and guidelines will be paid. In the online platform the viewer will be able to visit the organizations and their tools from an interactive inclusive Europe map. While following the route on a map, the viewer will click videos or written stories, which are marked as clickable icons on the map. Behind every icon or a “stop” there is either a video of a workshop, with detailed written instructions of the workshop methods, personal story of some of the participants, a history of the rights of specific minority equality group, an info-graphic on the methods to use etc.
The project allowed the partner organisations and their partners, volunteers and communities to share experiences related to their work focused on increasing inclusiveness of young people, but also of children and adults. As a youth project, we focused our attention on sharing experience on inclusive youth participation to social life, including forms of increasing young people participation to the faith and religious life of their communities, increasing gender equality, supporting better participation and recognition of LGBTIQ+ young people in the social and political life, better access and integration in all social life and activities of young people with disabilities and of all young people irrespective of the wealth, ethnicity or residency (urban or rural). The project followed its aim through 2 types of activities: (A) learning activities, represented by 5 study visits and (B) an online platform / website. Each study visit included 2 activity components: (1) visits to projects and institutions in order to get an idea on the practice in the visited country/city and how disabled young people, LGBTIQ+ youth, young people from various religious groups and with different ethnicities can participate to the social life without obstacles and (2) discussions, debates and exercises around best practices on how to enhance inclusiveness in a sustainable way when planning Erasmus+ projects and in particular Erasmus+ international youth projects. The project was possible due to the cooperation of five partner organizations from: Romania, Finland, Slovenia, Portugal and Scotland. The strength of the project was given by the experience of each of the partner organisations in working on inclusive youth work, having each of them very different and particular approaches and target groups. These main target groups that are out main focus are: women and girls (receiving a special attention from RKI in Finland), LGBTIQ+ youth (the target group of Pride Ljubljana in Slovenia), rural and Roma youth (the main target group of CDCD in Romania), young people with disabilities (main beneficiaries of projects implemented by BLOOM in Portugal), young people from minority religious groups (the target group of Interfaith Scotland). During the project period, five learning activities have been organized as well as three transnational project meetings to allow partners to coordinate their activities. Each organisation in the partnership had good practices to share and the practices and methods used in partner countries varies from organisation to organisation which assured a large variety of the learning outcomes of the project. The 8 key competences for lifelong learning have been considered in the design of activities. 75 unique beneficiaries - youth workers or youth leaders - have been directly involved in the international study visits and over 3000 people have been involved in different parts of the project, including participating to workshops and other activities organised by the participants to study visits during the Interfaith Week (Scotland, November 2017), Ljubljana Pride Week (June 2018), in schools in Romania during the study visit in Romania in November 2018. The project involved youth workers, youth leaders, professionals and volunteers working with young people from each partner country. Most of them have a high level of expertise and/or in-depth and first-hand experience in involving young people from discriminated groups in local, national and international activities. Through the input of these youth workers on the project generated good practices shared amongst the youth workers participating the learning activities. These youth workers are working with the 5 partner organisations and/or with other organisations in their national networks. Therefore, one of the project results have been better practice networks for young people’s inclusion. Moreover, junior staff and volunteers have been inspired to be able to work with more inclusive approach and have better results on their daily work. At the second level, based on the experienced shared by the youth workers participating in the learning activities, selected as presented in the application, from the partner organisation and beyond, form other youth work organisation, two dissemination tools ensure a widen the impact of the project: (1) the online platform sharing good practices and the videos created during the study visits and (2) the direct dissemination made by the participants to learning activities, encouraged and empowered to share their experience with other youth workers in their networks. Regarding the online platform: it functions at the same time as a dissemination and learning tool, and tells stories of different youth workers, youths and organizations that works for inclusion in all partner countries and it gives simple guidelines for the youth workers.