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AN - Alternative Network

2020-2-PT02-KA105-0068422020Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: PT|IT · Grant: €54,570
Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training coursesLabour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment

Objectives

The Alternative Network project involved young people with few opportunities, namely the unemployed, in the global strategy and put into practice the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2030). As a project it responded to two SDG 2030: goal 4, which aims to ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all; and goal 8 which aims to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. Global unemployment has increased from 170 million in 2007 to about 202 million by mid-2016, among them, approximately 75 million are women or young people. 470 million jobs are needed globally to bring new people into the labour market between 2016 and 2030. In accordance with these two objectives, the main purpose of the AN - Alternative Network was to promote a new model of Participatory and Collaborative Pedagogy as a way to train young workers in precarious situations and long-term unemployed young people who, due to the deregulation of the labour market, were completely removed from platforms of youth participation and involvement in the political, social and community field. In another quadrant, we trained Youth Technicians and Educational Agents who work with these young people in this new pedagogical model centred on GNH (Gross Domestic Happiness) indicators, taking the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a starting point. In recent editions of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, one of the central themes was the so-called "Fourth Industrial Revolution". This reality, which we are already beginning to experience in our daily lives, means an economy with a strong presence of digital technologies, mobility and connectivity of people, in which the differences between men and machines dissolve and whose central value is information. According to specialists, countries need to emphasise investment in education and innovation to obtain gains in productivity and job generation. The great challenge is to maintain the social advances and stimulate the increase of productivity. New social pacts are needed so that this new reality can be transformed into opportunities. It is necessary to build new alliances that pierce political parties and installed corporations and enable the conditions for the creation of a new cycle of financial, human and educational investment, where people, and particularly young people, remain part of the process and not just the final recipient. The model we put into practice transgressed all the conventional indicators and refocused the psychosocial development process on the concrete reality of the young person, without, however, neglecting the global labour market based on competitiveness, productivity and meritocracy. The use of Gross Domestic Happiness (GNH) measures emerged as a convergent idea of what was claimed to be a more plural method of involvement, while at the same time managing to provide space for young people to develop reflections capable of being adaptable to their realities (https://www.infoescola.com/sociedade/felicidade-internabruta-fib/). While traditional development models have economic growth as their primary objective, the GNH concept is based on the principle that the true development of a human society and arises when spiritual development and material development are simultaneous, thus complementing and reinforcing each other. The AN generated the creation of a new model of youth inclusion and involvement (for the youth public absent from the current platforms of citizen participation), which articulated and bridged the concepts of Economy and Community, based on processes promoting youth participation oriented towards emancipation, citizenship and fighting exclusion through labour market deregulation. All this through networking based on the structure of informal youth groups of local intervention and partnership networks promoting employment-friendly attitudes. The AN - Alternative Network had as its priorities the promotion of intercultural dialogue and the defence of the youth participation rights of young workers and long-term unemployed. In the project we involved 101 young people, aged between 16 and 27. Of these 101 young people, we directly involved 30 of them in mobility, and 50 of them directly in this project. At the level of youth workers, we involved almost 40.

Project partners (3)