Through the sharing of good practices and exchange of experience we presented the councillors how to work with young people in the towns and villages, and what tools to use to render the locations more youth-friendly. Through this method of education we intend to increase the offer of informal education and leisure time alternatives, to engage more youth in the dialogue with the decision makers in the planning and offering such services in the short-term and to make the home town more attractive to young people in the long-term. The principal goal of the project is to apply the efficient method of education for the target group 40+ in order to instigate communication between the decision makers and young people; to share experience and identify tools for a town which is open and friendly to young people. The secondary goal is the awareness of how important it is to integrate youth of all age and social groups as well as to integrate youth with special learning needs and/or limited opportunities. A long-term goal is the improvement of quality of public domain by availability of informal education and alternative leisure time activities for youth, their engagement in the civil and community life. By meeting those goals, a negative phenomenon – migration of young people from the country to the city and loss of connectedness to the place where they live – will be eliminated in the long term. The project is a continuation to the outcomes from our previous KA2 project, Education of decision-makers and social services providers - quality in care. Its realisation did prove the importance of the target group in community development education, as it includes the corner stone of a civil society, education and integration of youth, socially challenged and handicapped persons. The course of the project has also revealed the pitfalls of providing education to the target group due to their age, lack of foreign language skills, low time availability, and introspection skill. The project focuses on town and village councillors and youth workers in rural areas. Those participants suffer from the disadvantage of their geographical location and the size of their population. They do not have access to education and to the necessary knowledge and skills in rural areas. Through participation in the project, they can discuss with counterparts from abroad and compare the conditions and differences in the systems. This will enable them to identify a method for efficient coping with problems in a specific rural environment which suffers from poor transportation, low density of population, lack of services for young people as well as absence of resources for their integration and engagement in public life. Beyond Improvement of educators’ competences we plan three blended mobilities as a main learning activities for target group. Having visited the partnering organisation, engaged in discussion and seen the practice, the participants will be able to better reflect on their own work; they will understand the importance of engaging youth in the community and which solutions do or do not work. We are convinced that examples of good practice will deliver a “wow” effect – the most important first step towards change. If the assumed goals of the project are met, the project shows potential for long-term sustainability. We recognise the sustainability especially in the key collaboration of the councillors and youth workers with the partnering organisations whose subsequent activities and competences can support municipalities in the deployment of community tools and tools for the integration and engagement of youth. All collaboration initiated by the project between the project organisations and the target group will educate and motivate regional key actors to search for and adopt sustainable solutions in the mission for social development and inclusion of the population in need.
During the project, we wanted to use the motivation of rural councillors and apply non-formal education methods to inspire policy makers and to increase their awareness of the importance of youth work and of engaging young people in public life. Our plans included sharing of examples of good practices and urging to implement some of them in the partnering countries. Therefore, the offer in non-formal education opportunities and leisure activities for youth in the rural areas would improve in the short run while in the long run, the home municipalities would become more attractive for young people in general.
The intention of this project was to create a continuation to the education of councillors from rural municipalities which we started with a KA2 project in 2016. Through the sharing of good practices and exchange of experience we wanted to show the councillors how they could work with young people in the towns and villages, and what tools they could use to render the locations more youth friendly. This was our response to the need to educate the important target group of policy makers in rural areas. While the group holds a key position for local development, no one has worked with that group efficiently. This has resulted in underdeveloped municipalities with an ageing population; they are losing young people and professionals especially due to the absence of services and to the low quality of public life.