"The project Growth and Access for Millennials of Erasmus+ (GAME+) is 24 months Strategic Partnership Innovation project in the filed of youth, focusing on Youth workers' capacity building throughout involving new digital tool. The partnership operates in a European context where countries involved noticed the need of digital inclusion and involving new digital methods. This project will be focused on providing support to the youth workers and organizations when they are preparing their regular activities and to support the digital participation and online learning of young people.The transnational partnership moves from a common grass-root background and agreed on the main objective of empowering and strengthening each partner methodology and digital competences of their youth workers for tackling common vulnerable target groups with effective reach-out activities based on creative approaches based on NFE: learning by doing. Specific objectives: -To offer new, innovative digital tool-educational game based on gamification method; -Improve the digital participation and digital inclusion of young people;-To encourage and motivate young people to use the educational games as a tool for online learning; -To straight the capacities of the youth workers, young people and youth organizations on European level. The target group that will be involved in the planned project activities project are: -Youth organizations which are providing grass root youth work activities on local level. -Youth workers which are working with young people on a daily basis.The youth workers that will be involved in the project activities are the staff from the participating organizations and experienced in delivering activities on national and international level. -Young people, coming from the project countries, involved on local activities for testing the digital tool, Learnus+Identified needs: -Continuous professional update for higher quality of youth work, for more effective reach out activities in emergency and development situations; -Filling the digital gap in professionals within organizations exploiting the big positive potential of digital Intellectual Outputs on youth participation;-Raising awareness in public opinion and policy makers about social issues affecting marginalized people, Quality of Youth Work and sustainable development goals as stated in Agenda 2030 related to Human rights and rights for education for all.Innovation: Learning by doing: ""PLAY TO LEARN, LEARN TO PLAY!""Aim of the project is to improve with an innovative ICT tool, namely an interactive and supportive digital tool/educational game for youngsters, the quality and effectiveness of reach out activities for young people. Learnus+ will be a portable and free downloadable educational game based on the gamification method which will support the youth workers while they are preparing their regular activities. The project will be include: -Transnational meetings in Poland, Portugal and Italy;-Guidelines for using gamification tools in youth work; -Creating digital tool-educational game, Learnus+, innovative digital tool that will support youth workers while they will prepare their regular activities and supporting the learning process of young people by using serious games;-Training activity for testing the digital tool; -Local activities for testing the digital tool in each country; -Multiplier events in each country.Expected results:-IO1, Guidelines for using gamification tools in youth work ; -IO2, Digital tool/educational game - Learnus+, that will aim to improve the knowledge and digital inclusion and digital participation of young people with typical development and young people with disabilities;-Youth workers build and strengthen their capacities by using digital tools in their activities at the local, national, and international level.The methodology chosen by the partnership embraces digital innovation for social purposes including digital and gamification approaches seen as new frontiers for learning purposes, active engagement of youth workers and young people.Serious games are a subgenre of serious storytelling, where storytelling is applied outside the context of entertainment, where the narration progresses as a sequence of patterns impressive in quality.The idea shares aspects with simulation generally, but explicitly emphasizes the added pedagogical value of fun and competition. Conceptual learning in immersive virtual environments is a relatively young field but with an immense potential. Serious gaming can contribute to raise interest and motivation in students with a high potential to enhance the learning experience and families as well."

"""Heroes and Heroines of youth sport work for inclusion"" was a KA2 Strategic Partnership fo innovation project, consisted of 4 European Partners from Italy, Germany, North Macedonia and Croatia. In accordance with needs analysis and EU recommendations, the project aimed to develop strategic tools and motivate/empower youth workers to develop more youth sport work activities that will explore and extract all the possible positive aspects of sports for developing consistent positive intercultural acceptance among our beneficiaries and inclusion of asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants in our communities.Background: In our youth work for inclusion and intercultural acceptance we’ve noticed sport can bring people together, as when playing a sport together for the same team, team players are not focused on the interracial, intercultural, interreligious and other differences between them, but are focused on building quality team work together respecting each other’s strengths and weaknesses and complementing each other. Unfortunately, so far when trying to organise systematically the youth sport work activities with asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants, partners could not find enough youth workers experienced in the field of working with immigrants and in principles of using sport activities as methods in NFE/youth work. Objectives that were set and reached within the project:- Improved the understanding of the needs of immigrants by exploring their current situation and the (youth work) activities/programmes provided for their inclusion, in the 4 countries of the project.- Brought positive and long-lasting effects on participating and indirectly on non-participating (youth) organisations and youth workers by enhancing knowledge management with new innovative youth work resources and training models/curricula in order to provide quality youth (sport) work programmes for intercultural acceptance and inclusion of immigrants in our communities.- Supported youth workers in acquiring and developing key competences as youth trainers (of other youth workers) in the field of youth (sport) work for inclusion of immigrants.- Developed innovative outputs, and engaged in intensive dissemination and exploitation activities of existing and newly produced products or innovative ideas.Participants involved: 8 staff / project managers and assistants; 8 teachers/trainers/researchers and youth workers all working on the intellectual outputs; 95 participants of the multiplier events; 13 youth trainers - participants of the LTTA and over 40 multipliers (youth workers, volunteers and management staff – 10 from each partner organisation) that are and will be using the intellectual outputs in their youth work and testing their effectiveness locally both personal and on organisational level. Out of those 166, around 40 were young people with fewer opportunities. Project activities implemented within the project:A1 – Project ManagementM1 – Kick-off meeting in North MacedoniaO1 – Research Study on situation and activities/programmes for inclusion of immigrantsM2 – Second project meeting in GermanyO2 – Toolkit: youth (sport) workers and inclusion of immigrantsM3 – Third project meeting in CroatiaO3 – Curriculum: Using sport methods in youth work for inclusionC1 – LTTA “Training of trainers for youth sport work for inclusion of immigrants” in CroatiaE1, E2, E3 – National conferences and workshops “Heroes and heroines of youth sport work for inclusion” in MK, DE, HRE4 – International conference and workshop ""Heroes and heroines of youth sport work for inclusion"" in ItalyM4 – Final evaluation project meeting in ItalyA2 – Dissemination activities The project brought positive and long-lasting effects on partner organisations by increasing their knowledge on management, capacity and competences for providing quality youth sport work activities for inclusion of immigrants based on innovative approach in accordance with the intellectual outputs of the project – Research Study, Toolkit and Curriculum. Our youth workers strengthened their key competences in youth sport work for inclusion of immigrants, increased the opportunities for development of youngsters (mainstream and immigrants) in improving levels of soft skills and basic skills for inclusion. The partners in this project have developed and used the innovative intellectual outputs, promoted innovative methods and pedagogies, developed learning materials and tools in youth sport work for inclusion."

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.

Most of the today approach of youth workers in establishing a contact with youngsters many times is ineffective because the methodologies to attract the youngsters’ attention and interest are outdated. Youth workers struggle in finding contacts and moment of dialogue with youngsters because they use tools that are too far from the daily life of teenagers today, who spend most of the free time online.Gaming and social networks are some of the most common hobbies for youngsters and can be considered as a passive activity. Or, from other perspective, the youngster in that moment can be described as an active contributor to an activity or a common project in a game platform or as a moderator in a chat.The forms of establishing and maintaining communication have undergone fundamental changes. ICT-aided solutions are playing an ever-greater role, replacing interpersonal communication. Many times, youngsters discover most part of opportunities for their free time online and that’s why they don’t get usually in touch with youth centre and youth workers. Even if youngsters show a big confidence in using online tools they are still not educated in using these tools with full awareness. This project responds to the needs of our youngsters (mainstream and marginalised) and youth workers, as well as is in line with the latest findings on European level that there is a need for innovative youth work approach towards youngsters that spend a lot of their time online and do not visit (local) youth centres and youth clubs so much, any more.With this project, we aim at further empowering our youth workers in innovative usage of digitalisation and gamification methodology in regular work with marginalised youngsters in our communities, in order to increase attractiveness of the youth work activities and make them up-to-date for better impact on inclusion and engagement of both mainstream and marginalised youngsters.Project objectives:•Empower youth workers with knowledge and skills to implement digital tools in their everyday activities, with special focus on inclusion.•Empower youth workers and improve knowledge management of youth work organisations in theory and practice for building competences of youth workers in Gamification and adventure/escape room methodology in online and offline youth work for inclusion.•Encourage more youth workers for organising creative and innovative digital tools and youth work activities with gamification methodology based on affordable, low-cost and efficient adventure/escape rooms among mainstream and marginalised youngsters in our communities.•Attract more youngsters to our youth work activities by multiplying the innovative low-cost and efficient escape rooms against marginalisation in our communities, and thus increase inclusion among youngsters.We expect following direct participants / beneficiaries of our project: -8 staff / project managers and assistants; -12 teachers/trainers/researchers and technicians working on the intellectual outputs; -20 multipliers youth workers that will test the outputs with at least 80 youngsters (with fewer opportunities) on local level-60 participants of the multiplier events’ conferences, with at least 100 youngsters participating at low-cost escape rooms at the multipliers’ events Project activities:A1 – Project ManagementM1 – Kick-off meetingO1 – E-learning course “Digitalisation of youth work for inclusion”M2 – Second meetingO2 – Toolkit “Gamification and Escape room methodology in online and offline youth work for inclusion”M3 – Third meetingE1, E2, E3, E4 – Open conferences in SE, HR, IT, DEM4 – Evaluation meetingProject will directly impact organisational capacities. We expect the positive and long-lasting effects on partner organisations who will increase their capacity and competences for providing quality youth work activities for inclusion based on innovative approach with using digitalisation, gamification and escape rooms methodology in their online and offline youth work with beneficiaries.With our intellectual outputs, we will influence the change and improvement of existing inclusion youth work / NFE methodologies and programmes, at first among partner organisations of the project, and later among partner of ours and their wider network of collaborators.Marginalised youth in communities will benefit from the enlarged support tools and mechanisms in their communities from youth workers. There will be more online, as well as offline opportunities of support and direct mentorship of youngsters by now digitalised youth workers.As a long-term impact, on local and national level, we expect increase of soft skills, critical thinking, active citizenship and inclusion competences of mainstream and fewer opportunities youth. Thus, more youngsters will contribute to building society of inclusive community of active citizens.

<< Background >>Despite today’s youth being the most educated generation ever, young people are more likely to work on short-term and informal contracts with low pay. In the EU, youth represent 38,5% of the total unemployed population, while 4,6 million people aged 15-24 do not have a job. Two-thirds of the unemployed youth population are women. If we consider that almost every 5th woman is a single mother, their position is very ungrateful. Because of this, our primary focus was on the young women empowerment.<< Objectives >>This project was aimed to build the capacity of youth (work) organizations, their young women entrepreneurship empowerment centers on a local level and their youth workers in competences for entrepreneurial mind-set development through youth work in our communities and on the European level. This was achieved through extensive list of objectives connected to educational activities, development of educational materials and organizing activities in local communities.<< Implementation >>Project implementation included organizing preparatory meeting, 4 educational training courses for youth workers, development of 4 curriculums and 4 online courses, one study visit for youth workers and dissemination activities in local communities of each involved partner organization. Implementation was concluded with evaluation meeting on which the experiences, outcomes and outputs of the project were analyzed and served as starting point for partners’ planning of new initiatives/projects.<< Results >>Main project results are visible in development of 4 educational curriculums that can be used by all interested youth workers and organisations for future work on similar topics, 4 online courses for youth workers and youngsters, dissemination events organized in local communities of project partners and 4 educational training courses for youth workers coming from partner countries (not only partner organisations).