Our main objective in this project was to support youth workers in identifying and developing the talents of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and to contribute to their increased participation in activities that had the potential to improve their life situations. Specific objectives: To identify the main obstacles that prevented young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds from developing themselves and to propose steps to reduce those obstacles. To apply principles of talent management, including 360° feedback, to help disadvantaged young people discover their strengths and talents and develop them for the benefit of others. To equip youth workers with tools and methods that helped them motivate young people from disadvantaged environments to develop their strengths. To employ experiential pedagogy and combine it with talent-focused work to create programmes and tools that were attractive to disadvantaged young people and reduced the barriers that had prevented their participation.
Our project was focused on the target group of disadvantaged, low-motivated young people—young people who came from rural regions, from the Roma minority, from orphanages, or from socially difficult backgrounds (broken families, poor families, families affected by unemployment), from families with low-motivated parents, or who were in re-educational centres, etc. Since this target group remained vulnerable and needed special support to participate fully in the life of society, we decided to choose inclusion and diversity in non-formal education as our priority. We looked at them not from the point of view of their disadvantages but from the point of view of their motivation for self-development. The outcomes of this project could also have impacted formal education. We identified the following needs among the target groups: low self-esteem, not using their talents and strengths, focusing more on weaknesses and bad life circumstances.