"Project ""The role of a men in gender equal Europe/BeAMan"" was implemented in cooperation with following countries: Serbia, FYRO Macedonia, Kosovo (under resolution 1244), Albania, Portugal, Austria, Germany and Belgium. Aim of the project was to raise the awareness of youth, professional and general public in 8 involved and other European countries about the importance of the role of boys and young men in gender equality and gender based violence prevention in Europe. Project tends to raise the visibility of gender equality and gender based violence as important issues for European society, promote positive practices and mechanisms with positive impact on European level. As well to develop and create new approaches in working with young people. Objectives of the project: 1. Build the capacities of 26 youth workers from 8 European countries to educate and actively contribute to gender equality and gender based violence prevention trough non formal education and peer exchange. 2. Build the capacities of 26 youth workers and artists from 8 different European countries in the field of using theatre as a tool in working with young people3. Educate and empower 540 young people (100 per country) in 7 European countries to have attitudes and demonstrate behavior that contributes to gender equality and discourages gender based violence. 4. Create an international network of 26 youth workers, representatives of relevant organizations and institutions engaged in creation of gender equal and violence free Europe. To achieve results under project consortium organized one two training for youth workers where they had opportunity to gain skills and knowledge in working with young man and on how to use theatre as a tool in working under gender topic. Plus participants organize different workshops and practice learnt skills and knowledge. During the project was organized big international Conference with the speakers and participants from 23 countries in the world. Project results with the new group of trainers and resources, including the manua/guide, that can be used in work with young men in Europe. Manual is translated into German, Portuguese, Macedonian, Serbian and adopted to wider audience. This project contributed in learning, cooperation and exchange among youth workers and relevant institutions/organizations in involved countries as well open space for future projects ideas."

Project partners realized that an important problem of youth, including those with fewer opportunities, is lack of competences to be competitive in the European labour market. Inadequate professional orientation programmes, work with youth in terms of planning their further education and profession, and active participation are fields recognized to be worked on, through development of innovative and creative approach in professional orientation programmes for stimulating youth to choose their further education and profession.Project dates: 01/01/2017 to 30/11/2017. It consists of Kick off meeting (Germany), Training of Youth Workers (Serbia), Practical work in local communities (testing InOrientation technique), Youth Exchange (in Serbia), Local initiatives, and Evaluation meeting (Albania). Project partners are from 6 European countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Italy and Serbia. Total number of participants is 80.Project aims to increase the capacity of youth workers to support the professional orientation of young people, including those with fewer opportunities, through non-formal education programmes on local and European level.Objectives:- To build links among partners in order to foster exchange of skills and knowledge, expertise and good practice and networking;- To familiarize youth workers how to provide services of professional orientation in terms of helping young people to plan and choose their future profession to be competitive in the world of work;- To review and address essential knowledge, skills and competences for youth workers working with youth with fewer opportunities to offer them practical InOrientation technique how to perform self-assessment, plan of education and development of soft skills;- To promote InOrientation technique and non-formal education among youth workers and youth leaders who are working in the field of employability education for young people;- To use multimedia and theatre tools to support professional orientation of young people, including those with fewer opportunities;- To develop future partnerships among youth workers/group leaders in order to develop cooperation among experienced youth workers working in professional orientation and carrier guidance programmes;- To raise awareness of young people, including those with fewer opportunities, about EU community and to broaden sense of social value, overcome prejudice against others in different European context and breake stereotypes; and- To promote Erasmus+ Youth programme as a tool for supporting employability of youth, including those with fewer opportunities, at European level.Project fits into the European youth policy that is presented in The EU Strategy for Youth. It is also in relation with Europe 2020 strategy calls for the development of knowledge, skills and competences for achieving economic growth and employment and initiatives ‘Youth on the Move’ and ‘Agenda for new skills and jobs’.

The year 2020 will be historically known as the COVID-19 year of great pandemic. The whole world shut down for a few months and even when the lockdowns and curfews were lifted, our societies have witnessed a notoriously change. In some ways, the effect of this pandemic will be temporary until a cure has been found, but for some fields the pandemic has been a turning point that will condition and modify their procedures. This is as well the advantage since it challenges had made us and our work more flexible and created the offers outside of our regular working plan.During the lockdown, resources dedicated to youth had to readapt themselves in order to continue offering services to their users, youngsters. In this case, we can say that fortunately we live in the tech and internet era, and we were able to use it in our favour. The applicant with the youth centre which it is running decided to continue their agenda of activities virtually, using popular platforms, and asking and listening constantly to the youngsters what kind content they would enjoy. This is a method used from the open youth work methodology where local and small activities in youth centers are designed in accordance with the needs and wishes of youngsters. Concurrently, the applicant together with the Romanian partner and other European organizations, created the International Virtual Youth Centre platform, where a diverse profile of people related with youth would upload audio-visual content with the goal of entertaining and educating at the same time youngsters from all over Europe.Among the partnership of six different European organizations dedicated to the youth field, the ongoing project wants to continue this beta project that started during the lockdown, explore new realities due to COVID-19 and innovate in the methods on the implementation of a virtual youth centre in Europe. We want to create a platform where the youngsters can find the offer and resources that they also find in the physical youth centre, with constant accessibility to their referents, the youth workers.In this project the main target group and participants coincide - for we will ask them what they need and wish, will participate in the creation of content and then will become a beneficiary of this new tool. Also we want the youth workers to improve their vision about the changes that COVID-19 raised on the youth and increase their skills on media content, doing a training activity which will be applied separately and who focus will be on the instant media presentations, creations of videos, processing and postprocessing.The project will create three intellectual outputs - IO. The first one will be a survey to fifteen youngsters active in organizations daily work in every partner country, with which we want to collect the needs and changes caused by the virus and answers on what kind of platform and audio-visual content they would like to have. The second one, will be the mentioned webpage/platform and the creation of specific audiovisual content from each of the partners and in accordance with IO1. And as a third and closing intellectual output we want to create a digital handbook, that will gather the results of the survey and the experiences on the platform from every partner, its youth workers and young people.In order to achieve these objectives and results, we target a project duration of 24 months (March 2021 to March 2023). For a successful accomplishment of our milestones and discussions, we will have five transnational meetings in the different countries besides a monthly steering online meeting. Moreover, once the third intellectual output is finished, we plan to do a multiplier event in each of the partners’ countries in the format of a symposium so we can disseminate the results, share experiences and motivate other youth organizations to follow our steps.

The overall aim of the project is to realize a long term non-formal education process at international level (08/2016 - 10/2017) able to empower the youth work that the partnership is realising on field with young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or vulnerable groups, to raise their capacities to better perform and provide more useful services (educational, cultural, social, etc.) for the young people with which they work, to increase the competences of their youth/social workers to better include the different target groups in the social, cultural, and economic life of their communities. Project partners (Youth Centres/Clubs, youth associations, associations of social promotion, cultural associations, NGOs, etc.) are coming from 8 different European countries (EU and Western Balkans) and have a common understanding that it is important to evolve constantly the learning pathways and the development opportunities to reflect the changes in society and to establish a cross-sector approach to empower young people in their development. For this reason and following the ORA approach, general objectives of the project are: 1) to support innovation and quality of non formal education in youth work acquiring and developing new methodologies, activities and competences; 2) to improve the youth work that our NGO’s are doing on field with young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or vulnerable groups in order to empower their social, cultural and economical development and increase their inclusion opportunities; 3) To reinforce the relationship among partners with the specific objective to plan and realise future projects under the framework of the Erasmus+ Programme using the knowledge and competences acquired during this project. Future projects will represent a concrete opportunity of active involvement and personal and economic development for those young people with which all the partner work. During all phases of the project will be respected and applied the principles of non formal education (these include the methods of non-formal/ informal learning, ORA - Observe, Rethink, Act, experiential and active pedagogy, mentoring and/or peer support and relationship-based activities): all the methodologies that will be used and activities proposed are designed to ensure the direct involvement of partners and participants at any time of the project promoting freedom of expression, exchange and cooperation, interaction and creativity. Furthermore, the methodology used will be strongly oriented in terms of intercultural learning paying attention to the cultural diversity represented by the partnership (EU and Western Balkans countries), promoting a good environment, mutual understanding and cooperation among all participants. Following the ORA approach, main activities planned are a Study Visit in Liege (Observe Phase), a Seminar in Berlin (Re-think Phase) and a Training Course in Banja Luka (Act Phase).

The project C2C results from the observation by several organizations working in the social inclusion of young people of a reality which is problematic and that has not been easy to change: the increase in violence among young people and children, a phenomenon that takes even greater proportions in schools since it is there that gathers lots of young people and, on the other hand, they are in contingency to interact with others who do not identify with themselves. This problem has consequences for the well-being and health of young people but also in their school results and the very quality of education. The answer may arise joining two factors that we believe are essential in order that the success is assured: 1) through non-formal education and, even more, through active methodologies because it is well known that young people (and not only them) assimilate better knowledge through methodologies that involve learning by doing; 2) through peer education because the group can play a very important role in personal, social and psychological issues. But peer education is not without weaknesses. One is the lack of knowledge of the subject by the educators with the depth and the desired orientation. Another problem is that non-formal education is not yet recognized in some contexts as an effective way to make change happens. This project considers that has found an innovative answer to the problem that is multiple: juvenile and child violence, lack of opportunities for young university students to exercise their active citizenship in volunteer programs in their own communities and, finally, the lack of credibility that non formal education has yet in some contexts. What we propose to do then? By creating a strategic partnership involving four european countries (Portugal, Germany, Italy, and Macedonia), we think we have created the conditions to disseminate the project results to be reached through the work around the achievement of specific objectives. The first is to encourage the active participation of the youth in the life of their community contributing to a better society but also for their empowerment. The second is to find innovative ways to prevent and combat the phenomenon of juvenile and child violence and intolerance, especially in schools. The third is to train and enable youth workers and their organizations by sharing experiences and ideas. With this project we aim to directly involve in a pilot project, 12 university students, about 300 children and young people in primary and high schools, 30 youth workers and researchers, 200 people that are directly linked with this subject in 4 public events and 100 that represent institutions interested in learning about and eventually apply the methodology in an multiplier event. The central activity that we undertake will be the construction of a methodology to implement voluntary initiatives of university students promoting a culture of peace and nonviolence in school contexts. This methodology will be disseminated through a guide which also includes a set of educational games to be used by volunteers in volunteer activities in playground contexts and the classroom and a quiz online that allows children and young people to make a self-diagnosis of the degree of violence and intolerance and giving them suggestions how to change the behaviors and dysfunctional attitudes. The project will use methodologies hands-on training because university students will undergo training while developing their volunteering. It will also use participatory methodologies because the young university students with children and young people in primary and high schools will test the educational games and give us feedback of their impact. With this project we intend to disseminate in universities, primary and high schools and NGOs working with young people or with the issue of violence and intolerance, an innovative methodology that contributes to a more balanced society by decreasing misfit behavior of young people and children and simultaneously empower university students. And of course, given the involvement of multidisciplinary and multicultural team set up, we also want that this project has a direct impact on us to improve our skills as experts working the issues of social change and to provide us innovative tools and methods to work in an area that, more than others, adapting to a changing reality is essential. If this initiative we want to improve and spread by sharing it with the partnership, get enthusiasts around Europe, we are sure it will be a powerful tool to combat behaviors of intolerance of violence among young people because in Portugal is having a lot of success even without being structured by a procedural guide for its implementation. And this is the added value of this partnership: to build a tool for a common problem with the contributions of each organisation which have their own and particular experiences, methodologies and contexts.