This study visit gave the connection to open youth work and the possibilities and opportunities to use ERASMUS+yia to give education in a non-formal way and to reach out young people with fewer opportunities and to give them the same possibilities and opportunities as other youngsters. Open youth work is a field of action of social work with a socio-spatial reference and a political, educational and socio-cultural mission. The low-threshold and voluntary access to the offers favors the acquisition of educational content that is important for everyday action and social skills. Thus, open youth work makes a significant contribution to social INTEGRATION and PARTICIPATION, especially for young and disadvantaged young people. In addition, open youth work for the development of the community offers a wide range of professionally differentiated and proven offers as well as innovative concepts and measures. DIVERSITY in all its forms is referred to throughout, alongside inclusion. This ensures there is a dual focus – not only on including young people but also on strengthening the knowledge, skills and behaviors needed to fully accept, support and promote the differences in society. -. See boja.at It is important to reach out to these underprivileged groups, but this is not enough. It is also vital to equip young people and workers with the necessary competences to successfully manage and support diversity. This study visit will give the connection to open youth work and the possibilities and opportunities to use ERASMUS+ to give education in a non-formal way and to reach out young people with fewer opportunities and to give them the same possibilities and opportunities as other Youngsters. OBJECTIVES To see realities of open youth work of other countries: These are the reasons and objectives we want to achieve with this study visit: + Improve the quality of open youth work: umbrella organizations/ networks on national, open youth work on regional and local level + Getting an insight of the strategy of open youth work in Austria – also interesting for youth workers of Austria as not everybody is strongly involved in the bOJA work (umbrella organization of open youth work in Austria), international organization POYWE – contribution, what is the benefit? + How to go local? -> coming from the influence of the “Europe goes local” project of several NA’s in Europe; with this project we arrive a bit or touch it at least ;), NAs of Austria, Norway and Latvia are involved but not every youth worker knows about it…. We promote it and also make it vivid + What possibilities we have to stabilize the open youth work in our country: new financial approaches by Armenia was given + new lobbying project on EU level: “lobbying for youth work” with an organization of Latvia, setting up new approaches in the open youth work sector according to new municipality laws and rules in Austria, Latvia and Austria will give an overview how the process is going in according with this dedication to this new project “lobbying for youth work” + Palestine allows us to have a deeper insight into non-formal methods and to develop active citizenship with a strategic way to improve citizenship, responsibilities and democratic methods with and for youth + Setting up new networks among youth workers: international, national and local even. There are already several networks: we want to deepen and widen them, partly in the same framework, but also filling it with new people + National teams should involve youth workers from different open youth work fields if possible, that guarantees a wider spread of the information we will get + Active citizenship, migrants, asylum seekers, quality and health: topics which are following us permanently – how to approach it, strategies in Austria for it: youth worker qualification! + Digital youthwork: do we use it? What do we mean by it? -> introduction and comparison in our countries. Strategies? Possibilities? + Target group of open youth work? Target groups in our countries? + Target group with fewer opportunities -> a solution: ERAMSUS+ yia, trainings and youth exchanges, is it like this? + Lobbying: raise awareness of open youth work and the importance of it Austria has quite some open youth work in all over the country and the federal states. As a board member of bOJA (www.boja.at and POYWE: poywe.org), Jugendzentrum Perg has a deep insight of this field and can show around in Austria as the networks are deeply used. There is a big knowledge of the national field but also of the European field as we actively take and took part in several project and KA2 with innovative outcomes to be able to map the open youth work sector in a very wide overview.