Research points that Young People Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) are more likely to become marginalized and to suffer from poverty, social exclusion, crime and mental/physical health problems, while at a macro-economic level they represent a considerable loss in terms of unused productive capacity and a considerable cost in terms of welfare payments. In fact, low self-esteem and self-confidence, typically present in this target, seems to be linked with increased isolation and lack of belonging, what contributes to the perpetuation of this cycle of decreased motivation to assume an active role in the community and increased social exclusion.
This project aims to increase NEETs’ Social Inclusion and promote Active Citizenship, by developing key competences in Youth NEET and train youth workers to address better to NEETs’ needs, namely: the need to break the cycle of isolation/social exclusion; lack of motivation to become an active citizen; lack of self-awareness of their passions/talents and, even, the low self-esteem and lack of key-skills that are required to take an initiative and build an action plan to concretize it.
Therefore, the objectives of the project are:
- To create and test an innovative LEARNING PROGRAM for NEET Youth to develop key social and personal competences that will allow them to become active citizens and increase their social inclusion;
- To motivate NEET Youth to engage and discover their passions/talents;
- To increase NEET Youth’s awareness of some key societal challenges;
- To empower NEET Youth with key-skills to materialize their goals in a creative and organised way;
- To foster the NEET Youth’s Connection to the local/global community through the creation of concrete volunteering action projects to approach societal challenges;
- To promote the exchange of good practices among partners from 5 countries (PT, CY, RO, UK and SE), strengthening cross-cooperation and a multidisciplinary approach;
- To invest in the capacity building of youth workers competences promoting high-quality work and innovative methods of reaching out to NEET Youth;
- To contribute to the sense of belonging, as European Citizens and motivate participants to learn more about EU, creating a European Network;
For these objectives, we propose:
(1) Gathering different public/private institutions from 5 countries to exchange good practices, share knowledge, tools and efforts to build an innovative approach with NEET, strengthening cross-cooperation and a multidisciplinary approach, and, consequently, improving the quality of work with NEET in each organisation.
(2) Building together an innovative learning program – YES: Youth Engagement in Society - that will gather not only all our methodology and knowledge, vision and good practices in the field of Non-Formal Education, Learning to Learn and Experiential learning principles with support of Psychology, Coaching, Entrepreneurship and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, but also that will challenge us to go further and search for innovating ways to combine these and other relevant methodology and experience. For the correct testing at local level with a minimum of 50 Youth NEET, we will train the staff in question, aligning a common strategy.
(3) Investing in the professional development of youth workers competences promoting high-quality work and innovative methods of reaching out this target group, through local (multiplier events) and a transnational pilot/training course (involving 30 youth workers).
At the end of this project, we want to contribute to the EU Youth Work Agenda, by promoting not only quality and innovation of youth work, but also to promote the engagement, empowerment and connection of NEET young people with the local and global community, making them feel more inclusive and European.
It is possible to consult all the project outputs and download the complete YES training program by visiting the website: http://www.yes-project.it
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