The aim of the project was to strengthen the capacity of two organizations from the Baltic states for international partnership, improve the quality of youth work and cooperation methods, and empower young women at risk of social exclusion by enhancing their overall quality of life. The project sought to provide young women facing such risks with opportunities to acquire and develop various skills, including digital competences, to support their inclusion in the labor market and other systems. Using non-formal education methods and participatory approaches, the project aimed to empower these women by establishing “inspiration clubs” as safe and inclusive spaces for young women at risk of exclusion. We wanted to explore both theoretically and practically the needs of the target group in order to ensure that the implemented activities would be meaningful for the young women and youth workers involved. The project also aimed to create a safe and inspiring environment where, through empowerment methods, young women could develop themselves, gain encouragement for civic participation, and at the same time systematize the experience and good practices into tools that could be applied in youth work in the future.
The small partnership project “Empowered to Empower” was developed by the organizations with the intention of advancing their youth work to a new level. This included exploring the needs and challenges of the project’s target group both theoretically and throughout the process, facilitating structured exchanges of good practices and mutual learning among organizations, and creating new non-formal education methods to be implemented in everyday youth work. When writing the project, the goal was set not only to improve the quality of life of the specific target group — young women facing risks of social exclusion — but also to strengthen the participating organizations, provide networking opportunities among youth work experts, enable evidence-based research on the challenges and needs of young women, and develop practical non-formal education tools for future youth work. There was a clear need for new experiences, new challenges, new tools in the work of organizations, and opportunities to respond in practice to the needs of the community.