<< Objectives >>Create a framework for long-term bilateral youth academy between EU and Non-EU countries (G1)Increase the number of community initiatives in people with fewer opportunities of both countries (G2)Increase the soft and business skills, especially intercultural communication and collaboration, the so-called Skills of the 21st century (according to OECD, 4C - critical thinking, communication, cooperation, creativity) leading to increased youth resilience (G3)<< Implementation >>We will implement the following activities:2 IN Academy exchanges (1x in Slovakia, 1x in North Macedonia)6 online sessions & mentoring for the community projects2 local events (1x in Slovakia, 1x in North Macedonia)1 Framework for bilateral youth academy between EU and Non-EU countries (step-by-step booklet)Project management activities1 Evaluation meeting 4 Dissemination events on national level<< Results >>Project results25-30 young people acquired social, business, and intercultural skills5-8 successfully implemented community initiatives by young people in the local communityInclusion of 10-15 people with fewer opportunities in the international activitiesBooklet on bilateral youth academy

"The project is part of a larger program, Social Impact Award, founded in 2009, is an education and incubation program, implemented in 20 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia, supporting early-stage youth social entrepreneurs in developing and implementing innovative business solutions to tackle the most important societal challenges of our times. SIA Education program aims at raising awareness about social entrepreneurship among youth and teaching the necessary skills to navigate from vague intentions to promising ventures. “Social Innovators Network"" at the first stage map the youth social initiatives and further on will bring together young people and youth workers from 3 countries of the region of Central Europe (Slovakia, Czech republic and Hungary) in order to foster the partnerships, peer-to-peer learning and ideas of youth for social enterprises and their intentions to become entrepreneurs. In the second step of the project we want to connect and train the youth workers, mentors, and other multiplicators working with the youth in the field of entrepreneurship. We will train in 4 days 21 youth workers, teachers, multiplicators from 3 partner countries /7 per country. ""Train the trainers"" training will be taking place in Hungary during which we will gather the people working with the youth to give them the basics in the social entrepreneurship which they can further on apply in their work with youth (in schools, youth centres, etc.) . The training will enable us to create a wider network all over the countries. Trainer participants will therefore become multiplicators and will help us to reach wider range of our target groups. Here is important to mention that with the program we are especially aiming to reach youth from more disadvantaged regions we need to have a strong network for people working with them on a more regular basis, one time workshops are definitely not enough for them to get motivated and encouraged to get more involved in the field, therefore we identify the need to train more people, who can support them on the journey on the different levels and stages of their progress. This is a very important part of the project in a long-term perspective, since we want to continue building up the capacities of the people working in the field of the social entrepreneurship. We are working with the target groups of youth workers and youth itself in the project. 3 days bootcamp for young social innovator and change-makers from all 3 countries will be taking place in Slovakia. The bootcamp will be an inspiring event that will increase the motivation of the participants even further to work on their ventures and will enhance peer-to-peer learning. We want to gather them based on the specific topics and industries in which they want to operate in order to learn from each other’s experiences, provide feedback to their peers and create space for potential collaborations in the future. This will be achieved through grouping the participants based on two criteria: the stage of development of their social business idea and the problem they want to tackle; and not by the country of origin. In such groups, participants will engage in group work, peer feedback and sharing sessions, in order to foster connection building and peer learning.The last but not least, the project results will be presented during the so called ""Social Impact Award SUMMIT"", where we would like to have regional clusters in which one panel will be dedicated on “Social Entrepreneurship in Central Europe”. The Summit The Summit is SIA’s international flagship event and marks the end of the annual SIA cycle. It is a gathering of SIA winners, SIA organizers and international partners."

This project includes four non-profit organizations that have been working with young people for a long time, supporting youngsters in formal and non-formal education, and promoting volunteering, personal and professional development. The organizations will share examples of good practice and learn how to work with digital media to effectively communicate with young people and manage to conduct needs assessments, how to analyze data and promote the organization and its activities on social media and the Internet in general.In our organizations, we feel that we have to reconsider our nowadays approach on how to address young people, get their attention, and motivate them to benefit from our services. Mladiinfo ČR, Mladiinfo Slovensko, Pewobe, and COSI would like to share good practices in order to:1) To increase the quality of services provided to young people2) To strengthen the human resources capacity of our organizations with volunteers and interns3) To increase the number of beneficiaries of services provided by us in terms of young people between 15-35 years old including youth with fewer opportunities4) Fostering civic engagement of your community by creating a PR action plan and guide for our organizations in order to achieve the upper mentioned objectivesTo achieve the main objectives of this project, the participating organizations need to exchange good practice in:- The means of reaching generation Y and Z through the internet (content on social media, website, campaigns, etc.)- The methodology of analyzing the needs of the various target group of the participating organizations- Tailoring public events and workshops addressing the identified needs for various target groups- Fundraising and building cross-sector partnershipsThe expected results for his project are:- Established strategic partnership for youth work between the partner organizations and space for continued mutual support- Increased cooperation of partner organizations in the field of youth work- 12 employees and at least 8 volunteers in total trained in the field of digital communication, PR, marketing, data analysis, and social media- 4 youth organizations will manage to create an internal PR action plan, that will help them to implement the knowledge and good practice they learned during this project into the everyday functioning of the organization- Increase the quality of services provided by the partner organizations through the ability to carry out quality needs assessments and professionalized work with acquired data- Number of local young volunteers active in each partner organizations will be increased - Number of young people participating in the activities of each organization will be increased, including the increased motivation of these youngsters to participate in volunteering and educational projects- A free online guide in English, Slovak, Czech, Romanian and German language for organizations focusing on the same target group, from which they can learn the basics of how to work with social media, target young people, conduct needs assessments and include more young people in their activities- A website dedicated to this project, containing information about the project, useful contacts and results for free download, available at least 10 years after this project is finished- Each organization will hold at least one Webinar course for youth organizations in their country with a capacity of 10 participants per 1 WebinarThe project helps the organizations not only to learn the trends in social media, PR, and marketing but during this strategic partnership, we will exchange good practices how to firmly implement these new findings and learning points to the everyday functioning of each of our organizations and preserve such functioning in a long run. We will learn how to conduct the right needs assessments, so we improve our future responsiveness to the changes in trends in the communication and interests of young people. We will create a special project website for this project and upload there PDF guides and organize webinars for other organizations.

"In times of financial crises and increasing youth unemployment, alternative solutions to achieve progress and development are more than essential. The youth remain one of the most vulnerable groups in these turbulent times and therefore, the current EU-YOUTH strategy by the European Commission has recognized the needs to provide more and equal opportunities for young people in education and in the job market and to encourage young people to actively participate in society. The idea behind the Cease Cowering: Youth Empower Action Here (CC: YEAH!) project led by Mladiinfo International and its partners: Mladiinfo Slovakia The Global Experience and Iversity.org, was to create sustainability through youth empowerment and to transform youth into active citizens, well-educated and with well-developed skills and tools to contribute to the labor market and move the society forward. The idea behind the CC: YEAH! project lies exactly in providing a program that will strength the capacities of young people to locate, exploit and transfer the knowledge and skills that are available online in the sphere of education and work, and in that way to make an example of how young people can grow into active citizens and change-makers in their societies. The very implementation of the project which strives at providing the first on-line MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) course in the field of youth empowerment and building youth capacities as well as a handbook, presents a unique material of this type. Whilst most of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are focused on enhancing the knowledge on particular formal education topic and are moreover one-way oriented, Mladiinfo International attempted to actively include the youth and provide a two-way communication through the web-platform, as well as to provide guidance and not only teaching material but also a concrete actions plans and consultancies. Moreover, the priorities addressed by the project are: supporting the production and adoption of OER in diverse European languages, as well as promoting the professional development of staff and youth workers in ICT methodologies. In accordance with the priorities defined in the ERASMUS + Programme Guide, the project was expected to enhance the quality and relevance of education, training and youth work, to increase the entrepreneurship, languages and digital skills of youth, to develop critical thinking by using ICT, OER and virtual mobility, as well as to level up the management and coordination between the three Mladiinfo Network members. A kick off meeting, where 4 participants (1 from each organization) gathered and defined the forthcoming activities took place in Germany. The long-term youth worker mobility was foreseen as one of the crucial project actions, where 2 youth workers from M! International came to the office of M! Slovensko in Mlynska Dolina, Bratislava, and jointly worked with their 2 Slovak colleagues on the content of the MOOC course and the handbook with title ""Discover Yourself: Build a Career and Make an Impact"". The project results were evaluated online. The project target was to reach minimum 100,000 youth globally that will become aware about the required skills and competencies needed for youth career development and where minimum 1000 youth globally will get the chance to have their soft, entrepreneurial and digital skills increased through non-formal online education opportunities. The course itself had more than 1300 participants and it was widely promoted on the web-pages and social media of participating organizations. Last but not least, the project CC: YEAH! is a starting point for strategic mutual response on youth unemployment and youth exclusion in the region of South-East and Central Europe and broader, including the EU member-states, and the non-EU countries. It was a bottom-up process that initiated strong youth partnerships in the field of education and acted as generator on future ideas and activities that use the youth enthusiasm and empower young people for action all around the globe."

Project DO YOUR BEST - JUST INVEST! (DYBJI) was a Strategic Partnership in Adult Education between Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Italy and Poland involved a two-year collaboration and involved work on two levels. On the one hand we expanded the field of work with a selected group of adults. The aim of that work was to increase their opportunities to participate in society and improve their family situation. This part of our project was mainly based on workshops in soft social skills is to adapt our group to the requirements of the labor market, to increase their life satisfaction and improve their language skills associated with operating the computer and on the opportunities for active leisure. Each partner organization created such a local group, consisting of between 10 and 15 people and it worked under the idea of our project.On the other hand, our project involved work on an international level concerning the development of the competences of professionals involved in the project working group . Each partner organization created the 6-8 person group and it organized local activities. Under the management of the project we are going to organize two international projects meetings: at the beginning of the project in Poland and in Spain at the end of the project.Our aim was not only the above described work, but also the preparation of the Handbook Do your best - just invest! containing all methods and ideas used during the project ( by all partner organizations ). This Handbook has been promoted during the five conferences summarizing the project. Each organization was responsible for organizing such a conference in its country, and inviting to the conference representatives of local authorities, representatives of organizations / institutions / establishments engaged in activities for adults (particularly those with fewer opportunities ) .