Social exclusion and inclusion are especially nowadays, the prominent topic of modern society. The barriers that young people are facing for their integration into society and their active participation are: social obstacles, economic obstacles, disability, educational difficulties, cultural differences, health problems, geographical obstacles. The result of the social exclusion of the individual is prevention from full participation in the economic, social and political life of society, in which the person lives. Social exclusion of young people can be caused by unemployment, disability, negative attitude of the surroundings and the individual to the migration, discrimination, physical and/or mental health problems, addiction, abuse, violence in the family and criminal record. The EU youth strategy 2010-2018 in its aims especially emphasizes the role and potential of youth work and youth centers as areas of integration. Youth centers quickly respond to challenges with a variety of activities or projects. Some are successful through the various projects (and follow the Strategy for integration and diversity), the others are still researching for the right mechanisms concerning the environment and its specifics, and concerning on the type of social exclusion or factors for its creation. Nevertheless, most of the time there are project's activities within youth centers and youth organisations, but not regular, everyday programme activities. It is crucial that social inclusion becomes part of the content and topic of the center's programme and that the social inclusion is incorporated in the system of center strategically. Within the project Social inclusion in youth centers, we will organize study visit of the youth centre as a good practice, we will organize international training for youth workers, who are responsible for developing programmes in the youth centers, where they will develop regular programmes of the centers and will organize national trainings, where trained youth workers will transfer their gained knowledge to other youth workers. A set of ideas, activities, methods, and insight into the specific content and successful programmes of youth centers will enable us to prepare a long-term plan in the form of strategic programme guidelines for youth centers in the field of social inclusion, aiming to train youth centers and their youth workers – programme managers and directors of youth centers, how to cope with the challenges of social exclusion in the local community and how to respond to it effectively with concrete programme. Therefore we will develop strategic guidelines, that will enable youth centers an insight into programme development in the field of social inclusion, specifically, how to develop concrete programme of the center out of the projects, relating to the regular programme of the center as well as on the management of the centers. The guidelines will enable youth center's development and more effective work in order to respond to modern challenges. As a result, the role of youth centers in the field of social inclusion will strengthened, and as such will established the youth centers as a competent actor in this area compared to the other stakeholders (the various organizations working with youth with fewer opportunities, decision-makers,…), and to encourage local communities and also wider to take more pro-active approach in development of policies and programmes for social inclusion, which would lead to a more inclusive society. With the project and project activities, we will co-develop part of the European dimension on social inclusion, as we will develop specific programmes that will be based on the implemented analysis, analysis of the key documents in the field of social inclusion on national and european level (EU youth strategy 2010-2018, Erasmus+ Inclusion and Diversity Strategy in the field of youth, Salto's Inclusion publications, analysis of database of documents relating to European Union employment, social affairs and inclusion policies,...), which will be particularly helpful in the phase of developing the strategic guidelines and in the phase of implementation of international mobility and national trainings, with the engagement of professionals. We will develop strategic guidelines for youth centers in the field of social inclusion that will be used the participating partner countries and widely and will guide the development of social inclusion in the youth sector.
Social Inclusion in Youth Centres was a 24-month Strategic Partnership which was financed by the Erasmus+ programme Youth in Action, between four partner organizations. We focused on factors that make young people aware of the importance of social exclusion and the inclusion of young people into today’s modern society, and we wanted to develop not only activities and tools for youth workers, but also to develop sustainable programme activity guidelines for youth centres and related organizations working with young people. In this project we are following the objectives of the EU Youth Strategy in the area of policy decisions in social inclusion. The project began with a kick-off meeting, which was the basis for the project. The purpose of the kick-off meeting was a joint overview of the project activities and the final preparation for our cooperation. The next step was to prepare an analysis of the current position in each country. In this analysis we wanted to take into account critical local environments where the challenges of social inclusion are perceived. The method of analysis was prepared by a narrower project team at the national level in each country. Within the framework of the Social Inclusion in Youth Centres project, we also made a study visit, with the purpose of viewing good practice in youth centres in Oldenburg (Germany). This provided us with insight into good practice in developing and implementing programme activities in the field of social inclusion. Armed with all the knowledge from the previous activities, we prepared a programme for international training for youth workers who are responsible for the development of programmes in youth centres, where they could develop regular programme content of their youth centre and minor project activities in the field of social inclusion. At the international training youth workers also developed pilot national training courses for transferring the acquired knowledge to other youth workers, and to test the activities for social inclusion to better understand where the social inclusion programme of particular youth centres should go and how. We completed the project with multiple events in each country intended for decision-makers, various organizations that encounter social exclusion issues, and heads of youth centres, with the purpose of commenting and adapting the draft of the strategy paper. Through all the activities the process of strategy development took place, based on the analysis in each country, methods and insight into the concrete content, and the successful programme content of the youth centres in each country. All this enabled us to prepare a long-term sustainable strategy for programme development in youth centres and other related organizations in the field of social inclusion, and as a help for youth workers and youth centre leaders, how to deal with the challenges of social exclusion in the local community and how to effectively respond to them. We developed strategic guidelines that will enable youth centres to develop programme activities in the field of social inclusion, and, more precisely, how to develop programme content for the programme plan in youth centres.