Youth with mental disabilities represents a vulnerable category that is facing many difficulties in integrating in society, especially in Eastern Europe where their integration is more difficult due to the lack of infrastructure, learning methodology and sometimes due to stereotypes that still persist in society. For improving their situation and their access to education, there is a need for accessible ways for developing the skills of youth workers in working with people with disability, the skills of parents and support staff in order to work on the development of children with different stages of mental disabilities appart from their therapy or counseling hours and for methodologies that can be used in reducing the prejudice of people towards those facing disability. For this, our project aimed at developing methodologies, tools, human resources, capacities and recommendations, that will help youngsters with mental disabilities to improve their personal growth appart form their counseling or therapy hours and to be better integrated in the main stream schooling system. It was done in cooperation with organisations from Bugaria and Romania, each of them bringing a different experience in this initiative. In order to achieve these objectives, different outputs was created, including a T-kit on PECS, a T-kit containing methods for creating a space that will foster the integration of youngsters with disability in the mainstream school system. All these was tested in 3 training courses, in order to see to what extent they can be later implemented and what changes are needed. Through the project we intended to achieve some measurable outputs related to increasing the capacity of youth workers, teachers and untrained people to better integrate mentally disabled youth and help their educational development outside the counseling and therapy hours and in the mainstream school system. Moreover, youth organisations and other institutions targeted by the project are expected to cooperate more in similar initiatives.

"""Peers for Equality - developing capacities for tackling gender based discrimination"" is an Eramsmus+ project aiming at developing the capacities of platforms and NGOs working with peer education of responding to the needs existing in European and Central Asian societies for reducing gender based discrimination.To achieve this, two international peer training networks: the European Peer Training Organisation and Y-Peer will cooperate to develop a new educational programme. This will be done by exchanging, adapting and creating non­formal methods and tools that will help future peer trainers change the mentality of people with respect to gender based discrimination.For this, until the end of the project, we plan to achieve the following objectives:- developing a new programme of non­formal learning that will reduce gender based discrimination among participants by at least 40%, adapted to the needs and realities of the European and Central Asian society, based on the partners’ cooperation and the experiences they had regarding this topic- testing and assessing the effectiveness of these new youth practices in 5 different cultural contexts, on a minimum of 100 youngsters;- ensuring the sustainability of this programme for at least 3 years and its multiplication;Through 3 youth mobilities and on-field activities which will involve young peer educators from Central Asia, East and West Europe, we plan to test the future methodologies and kick start a new programme for addressing gender inequality."

"In the light of the crisis following the recent flows of asylum seekers from different countries, the EU has decided that promoting peer-education for diversity, intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, common values of freedom, tolerance, and respect, should be one of its main priorities. There is a need for a more comprehensive solution and we have decided to join efforts in our common aim of facilitating the integration of refugees into the European environment.During the lifetime of the Peers for Integration project the partners:- an extensive research on barriers standing in the way of young refugees' social inclusion in Belgium, Italy, and Romania.- developed a training methodology using peer education for young refugees and migrants to develop competencies related to self-awareness and cultural identity/ interactions in an inter-cultural environment/ norms, codes, and other cultural elements that may cause ""cultural friction""/ presentation and promotion of different cultures/ dealing with situations in which the individual is witness or victim of prejudice/discrimination/ taking social action/ peer-education- tested and piloted the training methodologies during international learning mobilities to which 32 participants coming from Romania, Italy, and Belgium took part.- organized local workshops in Romania, Belgium, and Itlay during which previously trained participants used the Peers for Integration methodology to further give the opportunity to youngsters to be part of this formative process. A total number of 240 participants took part in the local activities.- organized dissemination events in Romania, Belgium, and Italy face to face as well as online in order to promote the newly created methodology.- developed a platform in order to promote and upload into the public space the newly created methodology and also to serve as a platform where future peer trainers who would like to use the Peers for Integration manual can see through tutorials especially created for them how the methods should be devielvered.Due to a need identified after the covid 19 pandemic shut down all face-to-face activities, we also created the Peers for integration open learning platform in order to give the opportunity to peer educators and trainers to deliver the Peers for Integration methodology in an online format. This gives us the opportunity to reach audiences, communities, and youngsters that were not accessible for the project results.The results we created are accessible on the project platform www.integration.ofetin.ro as well as on the Erasmus+ dissemination platform. The websites and project results are translated into multiple languages in order to respond to local needs and also to avoid language barriers when delivering local workshops."

<< Objectives >>The project will implement an innovative training program for parents of children with developmental disabilities and behavioral problems to expand and develop current competencies and skills. For the specialists who work with them (special educators, assistant teachers), we will create an electronic compendium on the program. The training program will be implemented online through new technologies and present in the educational environment of the target groups.<< Implementation >>The following activities will be carried out as part of the project:1. Kick-off meeting and virtual meetings;2. Four final conferences for the target groups.Two main results will be realized:RESULT 1 - Design, implementation and conduct of the training program;RESULT 2 - Electronic self-learning compendium;All materials, documents and media created will be freely available and promoted through open licenses without restrictions.<< Results >>The main results of the project are:- RESULT 1 - design, implementation and conduct of an educational program for parent training that addresses all issues, theoretical and practical, related to parent training and includes a training course for parents of children with developmental and behavioral disabilities- RESULT 2 - compendium for special educators/facilitators in a parent training programThe training course is an application of evidence-based guidelines.

The Strategic Partnership for Access to Volunteering is a cross-European research and development project with the core aim of increasing the inclusion of young people with disabilities in volunteering projects. The project is based on feedback and research from previous volunteering projects which identified access for youth with disabilities to volunteering projects as limited and often completely disabling. Young people with disabilities are known to face multiple barriers to being able to actively participate in volunteering projects. Barriers include such things as physical access, lack of accessible resources, no access to additional support from the application stage to project completion, lack of knowledge and understanding of different disabilities, and lack of consideration for inclusion at the planning and project design stage. This project aims to address this through developing a simple toolkit to enable organisations to design and implement more inclusive projects. The active engagement of young people with disabilities ensures their perspectives and experiences help shape the final product and that the project itself is fully inclusive. Delivered through a partnership of 4 organisations based in the UK, Romania, Italy and North Macedonia, and led by International Service, a UK international development organisation, the project brings together an extensive base of disability, youth, volunteering and educational expertise and experience. The core partners are International Service (UK) CYA Krik ( North Macedonia), Ferfilo ( Italy) and Offensiva Tirenilo ( Romania). The key components of the project are: - an initial phase of research- the development of a toolkit for training - testing and finalising this toolkit with youth workers, youth with disabilities and partner staff- delivery of initial training using the toolkit -production and sharing of an on line toolkit for training which supports the development of youth work practice around inclusive volunteering.The research investigates the barriers and challenges faced by young people living with disabilities which hinder their active participation in youth volunteering projects. The project partners will engage 75 organisations in each of the four countries which work with people living with disabilities to collect information from their members or beneficiaries. At least 200 people per country will be contacted to ensure the basis of the research is robust. Through collation and analysis of this information and feedback, a research report will be created. The research report will inform the creation of a training toolkit which will be able to be used by any organisation which carries out youth volunteering projects, to help them become more inclusive.The toolkit will be tested with a group of mainstream youth workers and young people with disabilities, and then refined before being shared more widely.The overall intended impact of this project is increased knowledge and understanding of the challenges facing young people living with disabilities and their access to volunteering, as well as increased inclusion of these young people in cross-European volunteering projects through the use of the training toolkit and applying this learning and guidance in project planning and practice.