Association of deaf and hard of hearing Nova Gradiška has finished the implementation of the project activities within the KA 1 Learning mobility of individuals Training course under the title „Youth for inclusion, inclusion for youth“ (Y4II4Y) project under Erasmus+ Programme framework. The project was approved by the Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes. The project itself will last until October 2017.
This TC was developed in the partnership between several European organizations, namely: PlanBe, Plan it, Be it from Cyprus, Baltic Regional fund from Latvia, Zavod Mladinska Mreža from Slovenia, AC Amics de la Biblioteca de la Fonteta from Spain, Connect from Italy and RE:Mediu from Romania, and it gathered 26 participants, including training team.
The project activities started on 18th of April, and participants worked on the topic of social inclusion for eight working days, thus responding to the needs analysis results that showed that excluded or marginalized young people are often trying to deal with it by excluding others.
The project aimed to explore a different approach to the topic of social inclusion by providing a space to exchange practices, opinions and new ideas.
The program provided participants with professional and personal development through acquisition of theoretical knowledge in the field of inclusion and non-formal education, as well as practical skills in designing and experimenting new methods within non-formal education aimed at strengthening inclusion. The participants gained the professional competences needed to increase the quality of youth work through the acquired creative space, the experiential learning methods and participative approach.
During the training course, the participants have designed a total of four new methods within the field of non-formal learning – a role play, simulation, team building method that uses the principles of upcycling, and a video designing method. All of them are aimed at strengthening and promoting inclusion, and they’re using an inclusive approach. We emphasize that all the methods used in this training course, including the newly created, will be available to all relevant stakeholders in the form of a manual written in English. This manual will be shared throughout our partners’ network and published in SALTO and VALOR platforms.
The evaluation carried out on the last day of the activity, 25th of April, showed that the participants are extremely satisfied with the quality of the implementation of the activities; and as the most important learning outcomes we highlight the gained skills of designing and implementing activities within non-formal education. All of the participants expressed great motivation to continue working with marginalized groups in their communities.
We would like to thank all of the staff in “Slavonski Biser” for their hospitality, and the “Rock Starci” Association where we implemented one day of the activity and held a traditional Slavonian evening, and all the media that followed our work.
The project has not yet been completed, and we are now entering the stage of dissemination of results and evaluation of the entire project. All of the partners will implement a workshop in their local community during which they will use one of the newly-designed methods as the main dissemination activity.
We are strongly convinced that this project will have a long term benefit because it will lead to greater effort in developing and implementing inclusion strategies of high quality that will ensure reaching higher levels of social cohesion throughout Europe.
