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ImproMoves

2023-1-CZ01-KA153-YOU-0001407122023Mobility of youth workersongoing
Countries: CZ|IT|ES|HU|EL|BG|LV|DE · Grant: €27,607
Entrepreneurial learning - entrepreneurship educationNew learning and teaching methods and approaches

Objectives

Our project, ImproMoves, arose from the specific needs of the youth workers' role and the NGO sector. It is their task to encourage young people in dealing with ambiguity and taking self-initiative at the beginning of their working life. The previous three years had shown that drastic changes could happen worldwide from one day to another. Dealing with uncertainty, unlocking creativity to find alternative ways, and quickly adapting to the new life situation had never been more needed. The aim of the project was to train these essential skills of youth workers through improvisation as an embodied approach and empower them to increase the chances of youth entrepreneurship. Furthermore, successfully preparing young people for ever-changing situations had never been more relevant than back then. We believe that these were crucial life skills for young people in the future to engage with the labor market, learn from each experience, and take these skills into their local communities To achieve this, we set the following objectives: - increase the capacity of youth workers by enriching their working methods with the innovative tool of applied improvisation as an embodied learning approach - learn how to apply improvisation to improve sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, deal with uncertainty, quickly adapt to new situations and release creativity - to provide an opportunity for sharing good practices focusing on embodied learning techniques to improve sense of initiative and entrepreneurship - to introduce Youthpass as a tool for self-assessment, evaluation and recognition of non-formal learning - foster international development cooperation between the participating countries Developing the capacity of youth workers through applied improvisation helped participants and their organizations to increase the chances of youth to get engaged with the labour market. Introducing an innovative non-formal learning method contributed to the quality and continuous improvement of youth work. Providing a platform for sharing best practices in terms of embodied non-formal educational methods in youth work focusing on dealing with uncertainty and improving sense of initiative strengthened the enhanced co-operation between participating organizations. Introducing Youthpass as a self-assessment and evaluation tool strengthened the recognition of non-formal learning. Future project development will contribute to the enhanced international development cooperation between the European regions. We must point out that the labour market is changing very quickly, and youth are facing different challenges during their accelerated life when entering the labour market a decade ago. New needs and structure of the labour market appeared. The common development needs of our target group are also changing and it can be challenging for youth to quickly adapt to the dynamic changes of the labour market. It can increase the level of their inner anxiety, it can generate stress and pressure, which leads to difficulties when dealing with ambiguous situations. Our creative processes are suspended, creative minds cannot function under stress and pressure. Releasing creativity, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship have become extremely important. The so-called “Z generation” has lots of great ideas on creating new businesses but are afraid of becoming entrepreneurs as this position requires a different approach - being independent, taking risks, making one's own decisions etc. The ImproMoves project was meant to address this need. We wanted to show youth workers how to give the initial push, inspiration and self-confidence to young people to start the journey of becoming an entrepreneur. The first milestone is accepting that knowledge and experience come along the entrepreneurial path through the years. Entrepreneurship is a skill set, which requires a sense of initiative, creative mind and acceptance that making mistakes is also part of the entrepreneurial learning cycle. This attitude can be learnt. It is extremely important for youth that they would be able to express their need to ask for support, be co-operative, so that they would be able to benefit from knowledge and experience of the already existing interpersonal relationships and organizational network. If we unite our knowledge and experience in a relaxed state of mind when creativity can soar, co-creation can reach beyond imagination and innovation can come to the surface.

Project partners (8)