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Volunteering for YOU(th) – innovating and promoting youth participation

2023-3-PT02-KA153-YOU-0001737912023Mobility of youth workersongoingGood practice
Countries: PT|EL|IT|LT|BG|RO|LV|MK|ES|UA · Grant: €29,105
Democracy and inclusive democratic participationPromotion of alternative forms of participationBridging intercultural, intergenerational and social divide

Objectives

This project tries to attend the current problem of reduced civic participation of youth. Youth engagement in democratic and community life is crucial because it is going to dictate the future of all main sectors of our society. The lack of participation implies placing their future in other people’s hands and allowing other generations to make decisions that may be completely detached from their needs and motivations. On the other hand, this disconnection threatens the European project in the sense that youth do not engage in actions that enable the development of appreciation for the democratic European values. Therefore, we intend to prepare the youth sector, their organisations, and their youth workers to implement attractive and dynamic activities that promote youth participation, especially through volunteering. We consider that the new forms of participation, that are natural and valued by youth, must be integrated on traditional community activities and society in general, so youth feel compelled to follow a path that leads to plain citizenship. Considering the low levels of youth participation, the value of volunteering as a promoter of active citizenship and the fact that youth sector is behind regarding offers for participation, we identified the following needs: (1) Access to quality training for professionals working on the youth sector to promote innovative and motivating forms of youth participation; (2) Increase available and quality offers for youth volunteering in Europe. To address these needs, we had the following objectives: General: Contribute to raise European youth civic participation. Specific: (1) Foster youth workers’ recognition of current obstacles to youth participation; (2) Promote key-competences in youth workers, to recognize and integrate the alternative forms of participation valued by youth in their activities; (3) Support youth workers and their organisations to improve and innovate their youth volunteering activities as means to promote European values and participation.

Project partners (10)