This project is designed to support youth organisations, at local, regional and national level to improve their ability to work with and develop young people as citizens in its broadest sense. This project has a focus on ensuring that the inequalities of educational provision and style are overcome through the enhanced methodologies used to both work with the young people and to engage them in learning in the first place.

Start

across Borders

become Leader

This work focuses on learning in a collaborative, democratic and interactive environment The training is designed to give young people the tools they need to participate in their own communities on both a micro and macro level, including politics, youth organisations, and other civil society organisations. There are pathways within the development of this programme of training and within the national level networks and scope of the partner organisation to develop mechanisms for engaging in dialogue with young people and facilitating their participation in the shaping of national policies through engagement with local and other level decision makers.
The approach of the partners together is focused on learning by doing and through structured dialogue approaches with non formal and formal learning mixed together. Partners are working hard domestically to link this work with accreditation and formal education to allow these types of education to be recognised and formalised in people’s CV – allowing for their future employability and mobility.
The cooperation between learners is a crucial element of this work and something often overlooked within mainstream educational environments and allows those with the skills to use them without normal structures. There is considerable focus within this project on the value of voluntary activities Voluntary activities provide a valuable non-formal learning experience, which enables young people to acquire skills and facilitate their transition from education to employment. Through volunteering, young people develop values such as mutual understanding, dialogue and solidarity.
This project need has come from the shared issues facing young people that partners work with and discussions with other partners from other countries not included in this project. This project aims to be the base for a youth empowerment and development programme, building on cooperation between policy makers and stakeholders at European, national, regional and local levels.
The mobility and international element of the programme of learning, to learn about the opportunities available to young people is a crucial element. This project aims to develop young people confident to move beyond their traditional comfort barriers of their neighbourhoods. Many anecdotal stories from all partners about young people who are making progress in local projects but who lack the confidence to leave the country for mobility activity (youth exchanges usually) and even to leave their own neighbourhood for national or regional level activity. This ability to leave your own neighbourhood and therefore your own mindset is crucial to make a more active mobile and employable flexible workforce for the future of a changing Europe.
The end aim of the training development together is not to have the same young people with just an extra accredited training on their list, but to have confident and flexible and European minded individuals confident to work in teams and to be people making change both locally, and in their lives nationally and regionally for young people. To have opinions they can back up, to have the skills to talk to those in powerful positions. This kind of leadership skills are precisely the type of skills that build towards a more entrepreneurial life, where people have to be flexible and creative to find their work and their role in society.
This training also seeks to have beneficiaries understand that skills must be constantly developed in order to be competitive in the jobs market, that skills and the environment (especially technologically) are constantly evolving around us and that being active within our own learning is the key to progression and development.
Studies show that work is more collaborative than in previous generations – e.g by the Rockefeller foundation http://www.slideshare.net/RockefellerFound/sr-1780- iftf-rockefeller- youth-employment- 1217sm “For individuals, the key words are nimble and lean. Employees fulfil changing roles that require multiple functions rather than fixed responsibilities as they move from project to project”.
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