All Inclusive – Overcoming Barriers to Participation is an innovative strategic partnership project for youth. It comprises of six partners in three different countries: Finland, Italy and North-Macedonia. The partners all work with mobility projects and/or young people with disabilities and are very keen on developing new methods on how we can enable mobility projects to the who are now excluded. For various reasons young people with disabilities are often excluded from international co-operation, for example, from Erasmus + mobility projets. By disabled in this project we mostly mean people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. This diverse group of people will need special support to be able to attend mobility activities. For some youngsters with disabilities it is not even possible to travel and participate in the above-mentioned experiences, for example, because of multiple and complex disabilities. The organizations taking part in this project feel, that there is a lack of knowledge and know-how about how one should design and execute mobility projects with young people with disabilities. The project will develop two intellectual outputs. The first one is a step-by-step guideline which supports the participation of young people with disabilities to mobility activities and take into consideration the special needs of the target group. These guidelines will include the whole process of a mobility project, from planning to evaluation. The guidelines include methods of empowering young people with disabilities, supporting their communication by using different methods. This will include support needed for them to be able to take part in a mobility project. The second intellectual output is a method on how young people with disabilities who are not able to travel, could still meaningfully take part in a mobility project. There can be different reasons for this, sensory defensiveness can hinder the person’s ability to function in public places, the needed support can be so great, that it is not feasible in a mobility project or challenging behaviour can be so severe that traveling is not possible. From our perspective these challenges do no mean that the person in question could not participate in a meaningful way to a mobility project. Both the method and the guidelines will be produced together with the parter organizations, other stakeholders and the young people themselves. The professionals taking part in this project will mostly be teachers, youth workers and other instructors. The young people are young people with disabilities in different situations. Some of them live in an residential unit, some of them take part in daily activities, some of the live at home or by themselves and some of the go to school. Besides the intellectual outputs the organizations in this project will train youth workers young people to use them. During the project the organizations will also develop a mobility project for young people with disabilities and there will be multiplier events in each of the countries. Our goal in this project is also to raise awareness of the possibilities for disables young people for international co-operation. Yes, there are challenges, but it is not impossible to build a true participatory mobility project for the young people in question. All the organizations in this project see this as an important thing and they have seen, that it doesn’t happen by itself. There are actions needed to make this happen.
Many young people with disabilities and special needs have little or no experience in Erasmus mobility projects or other international projects. By implementing the project, we wanted to encourage them and the organizations that work with these young people to take part in such international activities. The thought process behind the project was, that there is an interest in young people with disabilities and special needs and the organizations that work with them to take part in international activities but there is a gap between this interest and the actual realization of these interest. And maybe the gap is because there is not enough information and experience in how to prepare and organize, for example, a Youth Exchange with the target group of this project. And there is also the reality that not all young people in the target group of this project are able to travel, for various different reasons. Through this project we wanted that also them are taken into account and wished to provide tools to make participation in these kind of projects a possibility for them as well.
The basic reason for applying for this project was the hope to make international cooperation possible for young people with disabilities and special needs and helping organisations that work with this target group to apply for projects and support young people in participating in these projects. For various reasons young people with disabilities and special needs are often excluded from international co-operation, for example, from Erasmus + mobility projects. This diverse group of people needs special support to be able to attend mobility activities. For some young people with special needs it is not possible to travel and participate in the above-mentioned experiences, for various reasons. The organizations taking part in this project felt that there is a lack of knowledge and know-how about how one should design and execute mobility projects with young people with special needs. The organisations felt that the exclusion from international activities is also a part of the wider exclusion of young people with disabilities and special needs from the society. During the project we came across examples where the participation into Erasmus+ projects was denied because of a person’s disability.