Early school leaving (ELS) is recognized in the Agenda 2020 as one of the biggest problem in Europe that leads to high youth unemployment rate. Disadvantaged young people are seen as a group with the highest risk of dropping out. One of the reasons is that schools have no efficient answer to problems they encounter during formal education and provide no adequate life skills. Elementary school is compulsory and most of the dropouts happen in high school when young people unprepared for challenges can’t follow official curriculum decide to drop out. By build the capacity of youth workers/organizations to create innovative non formal education (NFE) methods that will help young people with poor school performance (PSP) not to fall out from formal education system, labor market and society.We created consortium where each partner contribute to reaching main goal by its own expertise. Project starts with preparations on setting activities. Stakeholders will examine issues that cause young people with PSP dropping out from education and job market and determinate which of these problems can be resolved through NFE and youth work. We want them to meet in Brussels and visit institutions /organizations dealing with additional education of young people with PSP in order to create proposal of thematic structure for NFE training scheme. List of topics and educational flow will be at disposal to youth workers gathered at mobility activity, i.e. 8-day event in Belgrade with 28 participants (youth workers/trainers). They will be able to learn about these topics in depth and raise their knowledge and capacities for creation of NFE methods that will help finalization of training scheme for additional education of young people with PSP. This training scheme should raise knowledge and skills needed not only for access of labor market but also for self-employment trough flexible learning methods (experiential learning, outdoor methods, online learning methods). When training scheme is ready, youth workers will choose 1 school in each Balkan country represented in this project and start pilot period. They will run entire process described in the training scheme. In order to directly approach target group, youth workers will select young people that will participate in the pilot training scheme. When the work in this phase is done, they will evaluate it together with participants of this test period. These results will be collected and online consultative process with a goal to finalize methods will start. After that, online training kit (in 5 languages) will be created and youth workers and practitioners could apply this learning process in their communities. This process will finish with dissemination of results and advocacy actions (creation of advocacy material, meetings with institutions and organizations) in order to present them importance of addressing this problem and solutions we create through this process.
Include me was a project with innovative approach to develop capacities of youth organizations to support young people with tendency for early school leaving. It was the opportunity for youth workers and other parties working with young people to first explore existing, then develop new methods and finally offer to this target group methods allowing them access to knowledge and modern skills needed for equal opportunities in life and specially in labor market. Project was aiming to build capacities of youth workers and youth organizations, before the other, to be able to work with possible ESL with methods that will be taking into account the learning styles and needs of these young people. For this purpose during the project the training scheme for youth workers was developed giving them needed tools for working with possible ESL students.After the preparation period and preparation meeting we went through with study visit to Brussels where stakeholders collected valuable information from institutions and organizations working for and with ESL. Stakeholders gave their perspective of the topics and directions in which training scheme should be developed. The expert present at the stakeholder meeting started at this point to develop a t- kit, which was readjusted during the several phases of the project. T- kit general frame was developed at training for youth workers and other participants working with possible ESL. This training was tailored to meet two goals: a) to build capacities of participants to become able to work with ESL b) involving participants working on developing new methods for working with ESL which became a part of training scheme. At this point participants gave their contribution to t-kit preparation. After this we went into pilot period when participants from the training became multipliers for the developed methods. With new training scheme youth workers went to schools from Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo* and BiH which are detected as a schools of choice for possible ESL. They implemented number of test workshops collecting important comments from participants of the workshops and making their own remarks about the validation of the methods developed. T- kit was finalized after the pilot period. Its general parts were shared online almost from the start of development of the methods but its final version was posted fully online at this point and is left to be used by youth workers, organizations and institutions dealing with overcoming the challenges of ESL. This curriculum was made in English, Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin and can be used by wide community committed to work in field of ESL. Project team proceeded with intensive advocacy for its use which was done to involve even wider range of possible stakeholders. This project was successful in creating cross sectorial cooperation between youth organizations, educational institutions, and business sector by gathering them at the start of the project to offer their perspective for the topic; Capacities of youth organizations were built trough mobility activities, study visit and training to produce flexible learning methods for young people with poor school performance; New training scheme and online training kit were launched to be used by the community committed to ESL phenomena and young people affected by it; Advocacy activities were undertaken informing practitioners and institutions dealing with this problem about new flexible NFE training schemes that should support their work with young people with poor school performance. This was done in youth organizations, training platforms (CoE, YFJ, SALTO) schools/institutes/educational centers and other public institutions dealing with additional training and re-qualification for better access to labor market.