In the 'Neighbours Discovering Internationality Together!' project our main goals were: 1) Increase the awareness of the participating youth workers about the various international opportunities provided by the European Union (e.g., via Erasmus+ and ESC programmes) that they could use in the day-to-day youth work in their home organizations. 2) Provide the participating youth workers a possibility for networking and peer learning with colleagues who work in a similar rural context (Sweden and Finland) and who face similar issues in their work with young people 3) Provide the participating youth workers with practical understanding and skills on how to get started with internationality in their own work and help them map out project ideas suited for their home organization (already taking concrete preparatory steps towards actual projects during our international meetings). 4) Create, publish and disseminate a practically-oriented manual based on the work and results of the project. This manual will sum up our learning results and experiences and provide concrete tips and solutions for any youth worker who is considering taking their first steps in internationality.
First of all, we figured that there's many similarities between our countries - in the culture, in the structure of the society and also in the challenges and issues our young people are dealing with. Especially we recognized many similarities in the realities and challenges of rural areas in both countries. Based on this, we think that bringing Finnish and Swedish youth workers together would be a great opportunity for peer learning. In our planning meetings we also found out that internationalization of the youth field is one important priority for both Fryshuset and Juvenia, and we decided to focus on that theme in our project. Internationality can be a very effective learning tool. Both Fryshuset and Juvenia have also first-hand experience on this after leading many international youth work projects. However, we strongly recognize that there are many youth work organizations and youth workers (especially in the more rural areas we focus on in this project) that lack the knowledge, skills, courage or other resources to use internationality in their work. We have the mutual experience that there are some organizations and people who are very active, but many more of those who would need support in taking the first steps.