"The project ""My Career Our Game"" will bring together consortium consisted of partners from Macedonia, Portugal and Poland from different profile (national coalition of youth organizations, a university and an association) that will work on innovative approach in developing early career guidance methodology through gamification as youth friendly approach for prevention of NEET. Learning of the experiences of different European countries will be crucial in delivering the innovative outputs of this project. The overall aim of the project is to: Increase quality of youth work in preventing NEET in Europe. Through the project partners will strive to achieve the specific objective of the project to: Introduce innovative early career guidance methodology as a sustainable tool for prevention of young people becoming NEET.As the project objective is to introduce innovative early career guidance methodology as a sustainable tool for prevention of young people becoming NEET, this project will deliver significant input in developing innovative approach in early career guidance in favor of prevention of NEETs. The innovation in this matter is that this project will bring together the experiences of early career guidance in the non-formal and formal education, and will bridge them in providing recommendations on positive and innovative approaches in defining methodology on early career guidance in preventing youth becoming NEETs. The research will show different perspectives and approaches of early career guidance around Europe, both in formal or informal education, and will provide useful recommendations not only for the partner organizations but also to all practitioners and youth workers out there that want to address prevention of NEET using early career guidance methods. With the analysis the researchers should provide recommendations on defining methodology that will be applicable both in formal and non-formal education, which is efficient, and cost effective, that can be easily adapted by the interested stakeholders without expensive training programme.Partners will have a challenge to put the recommendations developed with the first intellectual output into practice and therefore to develop unique early career guidance methodology to be used and easily adapted both by educational institutions, professional practitioners and youth workers. Moreover, they will work together in order to draw off the methodology into gamification and developing of youth friendly game that will guide young people into their career development and improving their employability with less physical contact with youth workers and practitioners. First this innovative methodology will be piloted in Macedonia through the youth information and counselling centers in Prilep and Kavadarci, in Portugal with the students of the Aveiro University and in Poland with young people through the youth information of Association Education by the Internet - Eurodesk Local Relay in Kielce. In order to make sure that this methodology is adequate to the needs and requirements of young people, the process will be combined with short-term blended mobility in which young people with social and economic obstacles will participate. Three multiplier events (conferences) will be organized in order to disseminate project outputs and outcomes.Through successful implementation, the project will contribute towards improving career development for youth in danger of getting in NEET situation through piloting new innovative and common methodology on early career guidance through gamification in Macedonia, Portugal and Poland, will influence on the collaboration and communication between young people, youth workers and university professors working in the field and/or with youth for practical implementation of new innovative methodology on early career guidance as mechanism for prevention of NEETs, and therefore on decreasing the rate of youth unemployment on long-term.The impact of the project activities and deliverables will ensure the sustainability of the action. The sustainability of these gamification methods/derives of the adapted procedures for youth programme to be implemented by 2 youth information centers (Macedonia), one public university (Portugal) and one NGO/Eurodesk Local Relay (Poland). They will provide innovative and youth friendly approach in career guidance of youth in their transition from education to employment. We expect a number of the member organizations of ERYICA and Eurodesk to multiply the proposed methodology for prevention of NEETs which will further contribute in the sustainability of the action.On policy level, the continuous lobbying and advocacy for active measures on early prevention of NEETs will influence on increasing the number of users of active employment governmental measures addressing the needs of young people in NEET.employment governmental measures addressing the needs of young people in NEET."

"""Deepening democracy! - a strategy for improving the quality of democracy in school context"" is a project of 24 months duration coordinated by YUPI organization in Famalicão, Portugal, in close partnership with other portuguese partner (Agrupamento de Escolas Camilo Castelo Branco), Poland (EPI and Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace w Kielcach) and Romania (Asociatia feedback PM-Brasov and Colegiul National de Informatica Grigore Moisil), for a total number of 1700 young pupils and more then 140 youth workers and teachers in the 3 European countries involved (140 teachers and youth workers and over 60 students will have the chance to engage in international learning experiences). The partners are schools and non governmental organizations already experienced in working in close cooperation for a better integrated system of education for young people, combining formal and non formal learning. ""Deepening democracy!"" aims at contributing to the recognition of the importance of cooperation between non formal and formal education systems in order to offer the young pupils a more integrated education and allow more adequate strategies to integrate young people in the society. The partners are coming from disadvantaged areas of their countries, where geographical, social and economic obstacles are conditioning the development of young people and the mobility experience for learning, especially for young girls. The two topics chosen by the partners for the local activities in close cooperation between the non formal and formal sectors are 1) method of sociocracy for a more engaged decision-making in schools; 2) Sustainable development goals for a more sustainable strategy of the school. These topics are channels on how to involve young pupils in activities supported by youth workers and teachers inside classrooms and schools.Our main goal is to create an international network of partners interested and cooperating for the recognition of combining non formal and formal educational for a more comprehensive education alternative for young pupils, therefore contributing for a better development of the local community. We act at different levels to achieve this goal: local activities under the topics, coordinators meetings, staff training events for youth workers and teachers and short term exchanges of groups of pupils and multiplier events at every country involved in order to disseminate the outcomes and output presentations, as well as the 2 intellectual outputs developed, reaching a higher number of local partners interested in mainstreaming the tools.The outputs created during the implementation and closing stage of this project are: a Guide on Sociocracy with results of the research on in each school on how decision-making is happening and what can be done for improving the quality of democracy and an Educational game on Sustainable Development Goals created in collaboration between teachers, students and youth workers to inform and explore the strategy of SDG's in a more youth friendly and interactive way. All these tools will allow the improvement of quality of practices from all professionals involved and also contribute to the sustainability of this project after the funding ends and the dissemination of results towards other interested partners."

Job opportunities are frequently marked by the presence of gender-biased descriptions concerning the characteristics of the desired applicants. Consciously or unconsciously the wording adopted by recruiters can often be tainted with terms that are culturally more associated with male or the female gender, and for this reason, lead to self-selection bias from the potential applicants. Whereas the employability and the job opportunities accessible to women have been in the public concern and debate for years, the matter of gender bias in job descriptions is a problem does not affect only women. In the minds of both recruiters and applicants, the association of a given gender to some professions is still very common, therefore limiting the attractiveness upfront of some opportunities for many. Moreover, these challenges are bidirectional in the sense that they are imposed on both future candidates and employers and/or HR managers. At times, simply the way in which an advert for a job vacancy is showcased may, unwillingly to the one who creates it, makes it so that, for example, more people from the male gender apply despite the qualifications required. By the same token, throughout the recruitment process, many of such biases persist, leading to uncomfortable, and often unfair job interviews and again obstructing inclusive access to job opportunities. This project aims to contribute to the reduction of gender bias in communication processes in the job market, notably in the development of job offers, and cv from potential job applicants. To this end, it sets up to develop tools to raise the awareness about the existing bias in such contexts, as well as to offer guidelines and tools to support employers and job applicants for the conduction of more equitable recruitment practices. The tools, methodologies, and materials produced during the execution of this project aim to contribute to the qualification of that job applicants and employers, in order to be better prepared to identify gender bias related to the job market so that they are then able to minimise the impact of such bias in a future job opportunity. The products of this project will contribute to reaching the priorities of social inclusion by promoting gender equality in job access.

Project “Catch it! Non-formal academy of activities” aims at young people between 18-30 years old from Denmark, Poland and Portugal. With this project we try to find a solution regarding youth unemployment, which according to the statistics from July 2014 in 28 European Union countries affects 5 million young people under 25 years old. 7,5 million of young people are considered as NEETs (not employed, not in education and not in training). According to the European Commission and Eurostat at the end of 2013 youth unemployment among young people up to 25 years old, amounts to 27,4% in Poland, 12,9% in Denmark and 36,3% in Portugal. The reasons of such a high unemployment are complex and are largely related directly to the circumstances of the education system and cultural environment in which young people grow up in. It is said that a good education is the key of your professional career. In reality highly qualified young people are struggling to find a permanent employment. The education system is not flexible and it does not reflect to the needs of the labour market. The world economic crisis additionally deepened this problem.The project aims at enhancing the quality and relevance of the non-formal learning offer in youth work of 3 project partnership organizations by developing new and innovative approaches and supporting the dissemination of best practices.Additional aims: enhancing key competences of 30 young people from Denmark, Portugal and Poland regarding entrepreneurship, languages and digital skills, creativity, group work skills, time management skills, by participation in testing and implementation of the method of non-formal academy of activities; professional development of 9 youth workers; simplification of access to open educational resources (OER) in the youth field for 150 participants from dissemination of intellectual outputs events.In the frames of the project we will implement: study visits in Denmark, Portugal and Poland, to support the dissemination of best practices; establishing the panel of experts, which will develop the method of non-formal academy of activities; training course regarding the developed method of non-formal academy of activities; events regarding to dissemination of intellectual outputs. During the project meetings, discussions, work group meetings, conferences, training courses, internships will be held, we will be using case-studies and scenarios.The intellectual outputs is a method of non-formal academy of activities, developed by experts and youth workers, which will be described in an open educational resource (OER).The impact of the project should be considered at the local, regional, national and European or even international level.Thanks to the implementation of the project it will be possible to develop organization skills regarding international cooperation, group work skills and also develop a method of non-formal education (ICT methodologies, learner-centred pedagogical approaches), using ICT to youth work and non-formal learning. The project involves also scenarios and case-studies, regarding testing of a method, preparing texts for the open educational resource and developing appropriate assessment and certification methods based on learning outcomes.In the long term perspective the project and the developed method of non-formal academy of activities will contribute to improving the quality and relevance of the learning offer in youth work.

MAIN AIM/PRIORITY OF THE PROJECTMost relevant priority of this project is to promote engaging, more inclusive education and social entrepreneurship among young people by empowering them through innovative and integrated approaches in order to take responsibility for the community they live in . All project activities are cross-sectoral ( school, municipality, local entrepreneurs) and are building grass-root approach. Main aim as well as commission of this project is to include, engage and empower as much young people into the region/community they live in as possible and to prevent brain drain and high youth unemployment rate in rural areas. Thanks to this project, the empowerment of youth will be done by high quality and innovative activities – such us international trainings, local internships , job shadowing & personal expertise developments, which will lead into youth engagement (and empowerment) in a form of specific socially innovative projects implemented in the region/community they live in. All activities will be done in a both - formal and no-formal ways, as well as by using online (virtual training course with certified EU project managers) and offline (social business, green economy & start-ups trainings) tools and methods. Associated partners (schools and NGOS) will provide necessary environment for implementation of school participatory budget, so that the students will be able thanks to gained expertise apply for a municipality participatory grant. Thanks to this project, the students will engage to the community also at the municipality level.The participants will not only gain valuable know-how regarding green economy and project development, but thanks to the participation at municipality/community level they will gain also skills including public speaking, negotiation, facilitation, confidence, communication skills, and leadership.INITIAL SITUATIONThis project is an upgraded and more innovative version of a previous project PlaNET SOEN2, which had been awarded by Iuventa and Slovak Ministry of Education as the best cross-sectoral project for the year 2019. We decided to continue with the activities in our region, because the demand and need of continuous youth work in the region is still very acute, as none of the municipalities do have a sustainable plans on how to prevent brain-drain and high youth unemployment rate. In this upgraded version we have new partners and we put more attention into fostering the development of social and civic competences at the high school and municipality level and our priority is also to reduce disparities in access and use of digital technologies by mixing non-formal and formal learning education in online training courses. We expect that these new approaches will support the dynamics of school life and community life and promote more responsible and caring autonomous youth, exercising permanently their citizenship in a nurturing and creative environment.PROJECT OUTPUTS& IMPACTAre following:NETWORKS & PARTNERSHIPS & VIRTUAL PLATFORMS1 x international network and partnership4 x official partnership between PPs and schools & NGOs4 x sustainable networks of local entrepreneurs & local small municipalities1 x web page1 x social media pageMEETINGS & TRAININGS & INTERNSHIPS & JOBSHADOWINGS3 x transnational meetings (1xkick-off meeting, 1xmidterm meeting, 1xfinal meeting)2 x transnational trainings ( 1x training about school participatory budget & social innovative project development, 1 x training about start-ups & green economy projects)6 x virtual online trainings ( 3x training about school participatory budget & social innovative project development, 3 x training about start-ups & green economy projects)20 x local trainings about project budgeting -SPB( 5xtrainings in each PP country)up to 20 x local trainings about project innovations & green economy ( 3xtrainings in each PP country)up to 20 x local internships/trainings ( 5xinternships/trainings in each PP country)4 X international job shadowing’s8 x multiplier events (2x conference)INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS1 x online training about SPB and MPB1 x interactive workshop/trainig material about social innovations, start-ups and green economy1x municipality participatory budget (MPB) toolkitPARTICIPANTSAt least 40 x trained young people – project development, social innovations, green economy & start-ups4 x trained teacher – in school & municipality budget implementation principles4 x trained youth workers– in school & municipality budget implementation principles4 x schools implementing SPB4 x youth NGOs educated in project development & SPB4x local municipalities included in the projectOTHERS4 x social entrepreneurship business ideas models10 x newsletters1 x communication manual1 x project evaluation plan10 x press releases2 x video20 x monthly reports from each partner8 x project ideas (for school participatory budget and municipality participatory budget)