Young people in all European countries (2015 EU Youth Report) face growing challenges in the hard Covid 19 pandemic times, related to their active and full involvement in the labour and civic life of their communities.Most severely this is observed among youth with intellectual dissabilities.Youth work becomes an important instrument for reaching out and supporting these young people.The Inclusive Bubbles project will focus on the social inclusion, integration and empowerment of young people with intellectual disabilities. The Inclusive Bubbles project aims to promote social entrepreneurship among young people and to equip youth workers with news skills and experience related to solidarity economy, social entrepreneurship and innovative tools for working with disadvantaged youth on the topic. The project's overal aim is to improve employment prospects of young people with intellectual disabilities through exchange of good practices between five partner organisations from five countries. The concrete objectives of the project are: - to improve social entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and motivation to participate on the labour market of 25 young people with intellectual disabilities - to raise capacity of 10 professionals in delivering social entrepreneurship training and training for basic personal skills for independent life to young people with intellectual disabilities and youth workers; - to support establishment of 5 training social enterprises of young people with intellectual disabilities. The 2 target groups and their needs have been identified, as follows: 1. Youth workers, providing entrepreneurship and personal development trainings, need new learning content and innovative delivery methods to ensure quality and sustainability of the learning provided; 2. Young people with intellectual disabilities, who need a set of self-awareness and assertive skills, entrepreneurial mindset and increased motivation to cope with the complexity of today's social and economic life. Inclusive Bubbles project will last 15 months and the main activities to be carried out are: youth social entrepreneurship training implementation, soap making social enterprises; youth workers international joint staff trainings; local trainings for youth workers and young people with intellectual disabilities, project website and e-shop for handmade soaps. There will be two transnational project meetings- in the beginning and in the end of the project. Between them two 5-days international joint staff trainings for youth workers will be organised. The Inclusive Bubbles project will compile a social entrepreneurship training programme for young people with mild, moderate and severe intellectual disabilities on the basis of good practices in the partner organisations and countries. Within the programme young people with the support of youth workers will develop ideas for social enterprises for making handmade soap, engage in real "training" enterprises, carry out pilot production, marketing and selling activities within the learning process. All training enterprises will have the opportunity to market their products in a tailor-made international e-shop, integrated within the project website. The project's impact for the the young people with intellectual dissabilities is related to: improved social entrepreneurship mindset; communication competences; improved learning achievements; openness to cooperating with their peers; increased sense of initiative.The long-term impact will be more independent life and reduced unemployment. The youth workers will be able to deliver high quality training about personal skills for independent life and social entrepreneurship for young people with intellectual disabilities by providing them with the necessary information and appropriate methods for understanding the opportunities of independent living, taking the initiative in their own hands and becoming responsible for their future. For all partner organisations the current partnership will provide an opportunity for improving capacities in terms of international project work and collaboration, which is a key step of enriching organizational work practices and create further ideas for expanding the NGOs’ portfolios. For other stakeholders- parents, employers, social partners, policy makers, etc., the project activities and evidence base collected will give further visibility to the issue on introducing effective policy measures for ensuring real employment prospects to young people with intellectual disabilities. The project necessitates a joint international efforts since it addresses a pan-European issue, related to unemployment of young people with intellectual disabilities. Each partnercountry organisation possesses spesific perspective and approach to challenges described, which will enrich the overall understanding of the matter at hand and build solid and sustainable solution.
The consortium aimed at delivering trainings for youth workers and for young people with intellectual disabilities in the fields of social entrepreneurship and development of life skills. The partners worked together to reach several specific objectives: improvement of social entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and motivation to participate on the labour market of 25 young people with intellectual disabilities in 5 countries (5 per country); raise capacity of 10 professionals (2 per country) by delivering 2 joint staff trainings; local trainings of 50 youth workers (10 per country); support the establishment of 5 training social enterprise modules for young people with intellectual disabilities (1 per country). All objectives were planed and fulfilled together with sharing good practices and adapting the main training methodologies to the local needs and the personal needs and learning capacity of the beneficiaries - young people with intellectual disabilities.
Our partnership combines the efforts of 5 organizations from 5 countries, representing distinct regions in Europe (Mediterranean, Central, North and South Eastern Europe) with the aim to train youth workers and enable them to identify adequately the training needs of young people with intellectual disabilities and provide entrepreneurship and self-awareness training to them. Some of the partners have already successfully collaborated in other projects. All the participating organizations work with young people in the fields of social inclusion and training of youth workers. The needs, we addressed, are related to the difficulties in implementing effective training and work inclusion plans for young people with intellectual disabilities for a solid and satisfactory employment. Thus, we intended to develop and test new paths for the development of social and entrepreneurial skills.