The KA2-strategic partnership project “Living Solidarity Alliance” is creating through the long-term cooperation of 5 the involved partners, the learning mobilites for the staff and the intellectual outcomes (research, guidebook) a solid ground to implement the Solidarity focus in the local Youth work with young people with fewer opportunities. Referring to the recent developments on the youth policy level in Europe and the challenging situation of young people in Europe we want to contribute as NGOs to the development of a strategic and systematic support structure to empower young people to participate in activities with a solidarity focus. We wish to support the professional development of our youth workers, so they will empower and guide young people to get involve in solidarity activities: to reflect the world they live in, to express their needs and wishes, to develop their inner potential and enter a creative process with other young people to make a change towards more solidarity in our society. They will become active creators of a life journey where the values of togetherness, respect and solidarity are experienced as a creative dialogue. With the project we will develop a network structure and methodological strategy to implement within our NGOs a new solidarity dimension in the local youth work, which will enhance the engagement of young people with fewer opportunities in accessible and high quality solidarity activities as a means to contribute to strengthening cohesion, participation, democracy and citizenship on local level and in Europe. The 15 participating youth workers and youth leaders will be trained in three mobility activities on different thematic aspects of the solidarity dimension in youth work context (participation, inclusion, community building) in order to implement the learning in the local context, sharing and reflecting on their experiences in a community of practise with other youth workers from our network. With the intellectual outcome of the project: the research report and the guidebook with toolbox we will create a solid ground for the professional competence development of youth workers. With the dissemination of the project results in our local, national and international networks and also though the final conference we will stimulate a much wider impact on the european youth work field, to include the solidarity dimension in the youth work with a special focus on empowering young people with fewer opportunities.
The general objective of the project was the focus developing the partners’ ability to work more effectively with the topic of solidarity with young people with fewer opportunities in local contexts. Another important aim was to utilise the potential of the international collaboration within the consortium to develop innovative solutions to support a systematic impact of solidarity for the European youth work field. In the context of current political and social changes all of our organisations face severe challenges in youth work. The divide between rich and poor is growing, while young people with fewer opportunities are left behind. By giving young people with and without fewer opportunities the chance to meet, develop their own projects and improve their own competences, we wanted to create an international network that empowers young people and raises awareness of the ESC program. Other objectives included: - promotion of solidarity as tool for inclusion, participation and community building - international and local networking - collecting tools, methods and practical approaches to work with the topic of solidarity - developing innovative approaches to reach out to disadvantaged groups of young people
As we all worked in the framework of European Solidarity Corps it was also important to find a way to give more meaning to the word Solidarity itself and find engaging tools and methods to explore the topic on a deeper level with the volunteers of ESC. The project was supposed to create space for exchange of different aspects of solidarity and widen the perspective of young people and explore what is needed to give and receive more solidarity in life. We focus on different disadvantaged groups in order to better understand their realities and better respond to their actual situations. Our aim was to empower, motivate and develop the competence of the young youth workers towards implementing the focus on solidarity in their local activities. Especially in the context of the Covid-Crisis, where solidarity became a huge aspect within the society, youthwork organisations increasingly needed to develop an awareness of how to bring supportive actions and become a lighthouse for solidarity in the local community. For this we train the local youthworkers and create a community of practice where they could exchange their experiences and perspectives with each other.