Back to search

Wind Of Change For Rural Youth Work

2019-3-DE04-KA105-0185012019Youth mobilityfinalizedGood practice
Countries: DE|PT|ES|EL|GE · Grant: €28,710
Inclusion - equityRural development and urbanisationYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

The project idea of training course ''Wind Of Change For Rural Youth Work" was developed between our partner organizations' active members whilst discussing youth work problems in rural areas. We thought that the strong partnership which exists among us, also the knowledge, expertise, and experience of our organizations' unity around this topic gave us the possibility to make the positive changes for the rural youth work. We strongly believe that our project is a big contribution in the improvement of rural area youth work practice, the quality of youth workers who were involved into this training course and also the community development where our organizations, our beneficiaries, and these youth workers are active in. Exploring the realities in our countries, through observing our local projects, revealed that young people have been found to be, in some senses, disadvantaged as an age group, being unable to access many of the facilities and structures open to adults. Furthermore, youth in rural areas may be additionally disadvantaged and excluded due to: -the non-existence of access to proper transportation; - insufficient involvement in youth development programmes and activities; - lack of self-confidence and strong identity; - feeling being invisible because of living in small communities. Those apparent barriers make thousands of young people in rural areas feel blocked by the complex, what feeds their exclusion from active civil life and make them more seclusive and disheartened. As a result of this, global society wastes huge youth potential that urgently needs to be reversed. Youth work, the science of enabling young people to believe in themselves, has never been more important. Although we see that the development level which youth work has achieved still is not enough when it comes for rural youth workers competences, skills and knowledge in order to cope with the challenges and problems existed in small communities. Therefore, our project served the idea to train and develop youth workers based in rural areas, increase their awareness, international connections, working capacity and methods. So we also believe that our project played an important role in creating an added value for better inclusion of local youth and partner organizations beneficiaries, community development of participating countries and areas around our organizations are established. The objectives of the TC were: O1. To gain a better understanding of the Erasmus+ Programme in general and how it supports rural youth development O2. To experience intercultural learning by exchanging realities, opinions, and values with other youth workers 03. To internalize the role, rights, and responsibilities of a youth worker and realize the outcomes of youth work in rural territories O4. To provide the tools, skills, and knowledge to rural youth workers to boost the participation of young people around them in local communities O5. To equip participants with youth work competencies in order to improve their professionalism and quality of work O6. To explore youth workers' developing facilities and best examples all around Europe and in partner countries O7. To draft the action plan how to use gained knowledge and skills at a local and international level. O8. To create a supportive toolkit for youth workers how to develop their working proficiency. Training Course was fully based on non-formal educational methods and used different approaches for providing a beneficial learning journey to the participants. Our project's aim and objectives were matching the objectives of Erasmus +, Key Action 1 in general and especially in regard to enhancing cooperation between organizations in the youth field and fostering the quality improvements in youth work.

Project partners (5)