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Penguins Can Fly

2021-2-EL02-KA153-YOU-0000380712021Mobility of youth workersfinalized
Countries: EL|PL|LV|FI|SK|PT|BE · Grant: €39,528
DisabilitiesInclusion of marginalised young peopleNew learning and teaching methods and approaches

Objectives

We are convinced that effective youth work helps young people learn about themselves, others and themselves, society through non formal educational activities that involve enjoyment, challenge and learning. The purpose of youth work for us and our partners is to achieve the following results with young people: - Support in their self-esteem and self-confidence. - Developing their ability to manage personal and social relationships. - Creating learning opportunities and developing new skills. - Strengthening the positive atmosphere within the team. - Building young people's ability to face risks, make rational decisions and make decisions the control. - Developing a global view of what is happening in the world that broadens horizons and supports it social engagement and action. These are just some of the key points that youth workers want and need to provide to young people participants with different needs, backgrounds, and disabilities. Needs that shaped our objectives and succeed by our project. There are approximately 15% of people with a disability in Europe. So, we asked ourselves if also 15% of our friends have a disability, or 15% of our colleagues at work, or 15% of the young persons in our youth organization is disabled. Youth workers are working not only with intact (healthy) youth but also with disabled young people who are keen to learn and participate as their peers, just with using different methods. "Penguins Can Fly (PCF)" program empowered them and included them so they can fully participate in social, economic life and decision-making. Role as youth workers is to mainstream mixed youth work, help and strengthen disabled in their inclusion to the society. This project addressed the issue of youth workers how to be involved, worked and helped to youth work with young people with disabilities regarding their inclusion to the society and improved knowledge and skills of youth workers how to managed, adjusted and created new non-formal learning activities. Lack of information and practice prevented youth workers to involve young people with disabilities in their activities. By this project we shared the good practices and learnt youth workers how to be used and also created new and direct non-formal activities which they still are able to use in their daily work. Social inclusion is about creating opportunities for pleasant and respectful contact and cooperation. The Erasmus+ Programme also aimed at promoting equity and inclusion by facilitating the access to participants with disadvantaged backgrounds and fewer opportunities compared to their peers whenever disadvantage limits or prevents participation in transnational activities for reasons such as disability, people with mental (intellectual, cognitive, learning), physical, sensory or other disabilities. For learning, adjusting and creating new non-formal activities, the youth workers created a Handbook which was shared in English to the participated associations For a visibility of the project we used the logos of EU, Erasmus +, NA and participating organizations which are located in the Handbook. The main objectives of this project were: - To raised awareness among young workers that the disability is one component of the life of young people with disabilities (YPD), not the only component. - Through different activities made youth workers to realized what obstacles YPD were facing and what were the weak points in their inclusion. - To gained new knowledge how to work with YPD and in what content should the activities took part. - Learnt youth workers how to use the non-formal learning activities in the youth work with YPD. - To developed and promoted international cooperation among our organizations. - To discovered similarities or differences in new cultures, traditions, religions, ways of life, attitudes of YPD. - To promoted inclusion, respect, harmony, tolerance, acceptance, and global understanding among people with disabilities. - To created and developed the final Handbook with adapted and newly formed non-formal learning activities which were and will be used for further youth work with that target group.

Project partners (7)