In the project "Start to Backpacker Europe" we want to explore the possibilities and needs to able to enlarge an existing project "Sac Ados" to more countries in Europe, a larger project called "Backpacker Europe". Vacances Ouvertes is a French organisation that runs already 20 years the project "Sac Ados". This project aims young people, aged 16 to 25 years, to achieve their first autonomous trip without family or professional support. They especially focus on young people who are struggling financially and who have not yet travelled autonomously. Vacances Ouvertes offers young people a methodological support by professionals and volunteers, through workshops to exchange experiences and through training. The young people also get a little budget to remove a part of the financial barrier to realize their journey. By helping the young people with drawing up and realize their journey in France or Europe they help these young people to develop new skills. Skills they can also use in their everyday life. For example, autonomy and mobility. In addition, travelling widens your horizon/perspective. A trip through Europe also helps to contribute to the Europe thought and to European citizenship. With this approach they are working on a qualitative way with young people within a framework of non-formal learning. So far, the project "Sac Ados" is only running in France. We do not know similar projects in other European countries. Our project "Start to Backpacker Europe" is about the exchange of expertise and to decide how the project "Sac Ados" can be extended to Europe under the title "Backpacker Europe". We want to see whether it is possible with all partners/countries and take the necessary steps to do so. The ultimate goal is to collect the right information and to initiate the right partnerships to create the project "Backpacker Europe". We want to give young people from different European countries the chance to have such experience and consequently develop also new skills. The skills as autonomy, mobility and European citizenship which they can also use in their everyday life and which will allow them to integrate better in life. Our target group are young people between 16 and 25 years old who lives with obstacles to live fully and explore life. Youngsters who do not have a large financial support, who have troubles to integrate in the country and who did never profit from the benefits of an autonomous trip trough Europe. Youngsters who live with obstacles to integrate fully in the society need a bit of help. We believe this autonomous trip can help them to develop new skills, skills that they need in every day live, to find their way to adult life and to better integrate in our society and in the European society. We believe that our change of experience and the result - our startersguide "Start to include - by travelling" - are the basis to really start this project in several countries of Europe and let the youngsters profit from these benefits. We want to broaden our knowledge in different countries and our partner from France - as the specialist - will help us with that. We want that more youngsters in Europe can profit at the end from this project. The mean participants are our partners who will select and involve social youth organisations during the project. In each country the partners need to look who are the best social organisations to cooperate with. That is very important because we need these social organisations to be able to realise the project "Backpacker Europe" in a later phase. They are the key to the target groups. We will tell the social organisations about the project and what we want to realise with it. We will involve them giving them the chance to brainstorm with us to see how it will be possible to work out such a project in the country. And we will work together with them to get the agreement of them that they would like to really participate in the project Backpacker Europe. We will also involve youngsters from the beginning. The same as the social organistions, we want to know their opinion about the project and be able to make changes to the project based on the advices they give us. The youngsters are important in this project because we want to make something for them. They can help us to adapt it to their needs and they will be able to help finding solutions so the project "Backpacker Europe" is going to be a project that is really going to work. At the end we want to have the starterguide "Start to include - by travelling" that is approved by the correct social organisations and by the target groups also. This will be a good basis to present it to social organisations and policy makers, as it will be approved by these 2 groups. We want that this startersguide will be used to realise the project "Backpacker Europe" in the future, so more youngster will be benefit from the non-formal learning program, develop new skills and will be integrated better in our society.
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