The project is implemented by two partners: V.I.A.C. - Institute for Youth Support and Development, Slovakia and Cyrilometodejské gymnázium, základní škola a materská škola, Czech Republic.It follows up the results of the LarXperience project and aims to develop them further in the field of forming attitudes of young people, especially in strengthening attitudes of solidarity and receptivity and in building self-esteem, because our work has shown that these are important attitudes.The main objective of this project is to strengthen the solidarity attitudes of young people and build their self-esteem in the environment of non-formal and formal education through long-term programs using experiential education.Specific objectives of the project:- Support the strengthening of young people's attitudes through long-term continuous work with a concrete experience of larp play, as well as their motivation to participate in the program.- Promote the integration of formal and non-formal education and thus increase its impact on young people.- Increase the impact of the activities of youth organizations and schools in forming young people's attitudes.- Further develop larps as an educational tool.- Support youth workers and teachers in building attitudes and implementing long-term programs based on setting their own educational goals.In the first phase of the project, we will focus primarily on the design of 4 educational programs that will develop the attitudes of young people in non-formal and formal education. The programs will focus on the following topics:1. Solidarity and receptivity - 2 programs. The aim of these two programs will be to strengthen young people's co-responsibility for the environment in which they live, to increase their sensitivity and sensitivity to the differences of others, to strengthen inclusive behavior and to build an attitude of service for the common good.2. Building your own self-worth - 2 programs. The aim of these two programs will be to strengthen the young person's positive view of himself, the ability to appreciate himself and see good in himself and in others, the ability to cope without failure and prevent escape from pain and difficult situations into addictive substances that lead to even greater destruction of self-worth and the value of self-relationships. Within both areas, each program will be designed to be feasible within half of the school year, which means that the two themes will put together an annual program.In the first step, we will create two larps. One of these larps will be on the topic of solidarity and the other on the topic of building one's own self-worth.Beside it we will develop two additional tools. The first tool will be a gamified application that will support the implementation of these long-term programs and increase the motivation of young people, as well as promote a peer approach. The application will basically be a game, the participants involved in the program will be divided into groups. The application will work on such principles that it can be used for long-term work with young people on a given topic in formal and non-formal education.At the same time, we will create other questionnaires for measuring attitudes in the topics of solidarity and receptivity and building our own self-worth, which we currently lack. 1 questionnaire will be created for each program, which will be used before and after the program to compare the differences. There will also be a diary to record your progress.We will then test the created programs, application and questionnaires for measuring attitudes on groups of young people in formal and non-formal education.Mobility for youth workers and teachers on the topic of attitude-building through larps will also be a necessary part. This will train another group of multipliers, who will then present these programs in their schools and organizations.At the same time, we want to hold two separate workshops in each participating country as part of the dissemination. The first will be to introduce larps as a method of forming attitudes. The second workshop will be intended for representatives of children's homes and low-threshold centers, because it is for them that programs have great potential in non-formal education.At the end of the project, we will hold a conference on larp attitude building in each participating country to raise the awareness of other youth workers and teachers about this method and at the same time provide them with ready-made programs that they can implement directly with young people.

<< Background >>Our project is focused on the target group of disadvantaged low motivated young people – young people who come from rural regions, from Roma minority, from orphanages, from socially difficult background (broken families, poor families, families with unemployment), from families with low-motivated parents, young people in re-educative centres etc. As still this target group is vulnerable and needs special support to be able to participate fully in the life of society, we have decided to choose the priority of inclusion and diversity in non-formal education. We would like to look at them not from the point of view of their disadvantage but from the point of view of their motivation for self-development. Outcomes of this project could have impact also to formal education. We would like to use unique method of talent management to help disadvantaged young people to discover their talents and strengths and develop them for benefit of others. We want to combine methods of talent management with experiential pedagogy to create unique programmes and methods that will lead to increasing the quality and innovation in youth work as talent management is not very much used as a method in work with disadvantaged young people.We have identified following needs among the target group:1.Their self-esteem is usually very low, because they don’t have any positive patterns in their homes. They see themselves as those who are predestined to be unsuccessful in their life, because their parents are also unsuccessful. In many cases their school results are not good and they see themselves as those who doesn’t even need to try because they don’t know anything. 2.Many young people, belonging to this group, have their natural talents but they don’t realize them and don’t develop them, because they don’t believe it is really a talent that can be developed. Also the topic of identifying talents and developing them in youth work is still not very well known and there is a lack of methods how to do it and how to help young people not only to discover their talents but also to use them for benefit of others. 3.Very often also there is a point of view on them that they rarely have any talents but it is not true. They are much more focused on their weaknesses, they know exactly, what they are not able to do. And very often also the pint of view of youth workers and social workers is focused on helping them overcome their difficulties and weaknesses, much more than on helping them develop their strengths. 4.Even if there are youth workers and organisations who have programmes for young people, usually motivation of this target group in participating and being active is very low and so is their motivation to look for opportunities for self-development as their participation usually requires specific approach from the youth workers. Youth workers are often afraid of working with young people who come from socially disadvantaged background as they don’t know exactly how to support them and how to help them develop. 5.In some of our previous projects we have started to use methods of experiential pedagogy including larps, and we have already prepared youth workers to use them in their youth work. We can see that for disadvantaged young people the method of experiential pedagogy is attractive but they have barriers to participate in them. For example when we were introducing larps to young people who come from Roma minority or who come from socially difficult background, we have found out that there is a lot of texts to be read (all the description of characters) and for them it<< Objectives >>Our main objective in this project is to support youth workers in identifying and developing talents of young people coming from disadvantaged background and contribute to their higher participation in activities that have the potential to improve their life situation. Specific objectives:To identify main obstacles that defends young people coming from socially disadvantaged background to develop themselves and to suggest steps to reduce them. To use principles of talent management, including 360° feedback, to help disadvantaged young people discover their strengths and talents and develop them for benefit of others. To equip youth workers with tools and methods that helps them motivate young people coming from disadvantaged environment for developing their strengths.To use method of experiential pedagogy and combine it with work with talents to create programmes and tools that will be attractive for disadvantaged young people and decrease barriers that defends them from participating in such programmes.<< Implementation >>In the beginning of the project we will do a research among disadvantaged young people. In the research we will focus on the level of their motivation for personal development – how motivated they are to develop themselves and what are the main obstacles that defends them from self-development. We will also ask them if they are taking part in any programmes of non-formal education for self-development and which programmes works for them. At the end of the research we will have clear picture about the situation among this target group and about the level of their motivation as well as identified main obstacles that defends them from self-development. All the outcomes we will use in the work on our intellectual outputs and we will also prepare with the cooperation of experts set of recommendations for youth sector and communicate them to local, regional and national authorities responsible for the field of youth or education as well as to youth workers and youth organisations. Then we will start developing online portal for youth workers with the main aim to provide them tools that helps them work with target groups. On the portal there will be three important tools for them:1.E-learning in the topic of talent management. We would like to prepare educational course for youth workers how to help disadvantaged young people identify their talents and strengths and how to develop it and lead them to use it in everyday life for benefit of others to increase their motivation to develop themselves. This activity will be also connected to mobility of talent management, we want to organize withing the project with the main aim to get to know the principles of talent management and use them in preparing the educational programme for youth workers. 2.E-learning in the topic of leading reflections – we can see that reflections are important tool for self-development of young people and especially for helping them name their strengths that they can discover in non-formal education programmes and help them realize, how they were using them and how they can further develop them. 3.Online tool for 360°feedback – this tool will come out from coaching method circle of change. Young people will be able very easily with the help of youth workers to identify various areas and strengths and they will be able based on scales identify where they are now and where they want to be in next few weeks. Youth worker or other invited workers (teachers, parents, social workers etc.) will also be able to write there their point of view and compare it with the point of view of young person to be able to provide relevant feedback to him/her. Both e-learnings will be made in the style of videos, tasks connected to topic and practical tasks to be done with young people. They will also get mentoring support for their learning process. Then we will organize second mobility - be training course of experiential pedagogy. Participants will get all the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to prepare experiential programme for disadvantaged young people based again on overcoming the obstacles for their personal development. As the outcome of this training they will be divided into groups and create at least two short programmes of experiential pedagogy that will be afterwards tested on the groups of disadvantaged young people. We will also lead them to be able to use larps as a method of experiential pedagogy and as a last intellectual output we will choose 2 larps that we have already designed, and we will design two more based on the outcomes of research, and prepare for them video and audio files with the characters and important information for young people who have difficulties with reading or understanding written texts to enable them to participate in this activity. We will publish it afterwards on the portal with short methodology, how to use larps with the target group of disadvantaged young people.<< Results >>We expect following results:1.Research among young people will be made with the main focus on disadvantaged young people (young people from community centres, social services, orphanages, young people who have difficulties at schools). The level of their personal motivation will be identified including obstacles that defends them from self-development. Also the programmes that are nowadays attended by young people and they find them useful for their personal self-development will be described. The recommendations will be prepared in the cooperation with experts how to help them overcome those barriers. 2.The topic of talent management will become more visible in youth work and its principles will be implemented directly to the work with disadvantaged young people. Training course for talent management will be organized for youth workers from all participating countries to be able to learn the principles of talent management and use them afterwards in creating other outputs of this project as well as in direct work with young people, helping them discover their strengths and develop them. 21 youth workers from participating countries will be participating in this training. 3.Online platform for youth workers will be developed where they are going to find useful tools and methods for motivation and talent development of young people coming from disadvantaged background. The platform will be visited by at least 200 youth workers from all participating countries. 4.Two unique e-learnings that will be part of the platform will be created – one in the topic of talent management and second one in the topic of leading reflexions that is necessary in the process of personal development of young people. At least 60 youth workers or leaders of non-formal groups will be part of testing of these e-learnings. E-learnings will be created in this way, that youth workers can any time start their education. There will also be a support of mentor, so the online education has real impact on young people. 5.Online tool for 360°feedback will be developed as a part of the plaform. At least 30 youth workers from all participating countries will use it for their work with disadvantaged young people. 6.There will be 4 larps published for helping disadvantaged young people overcome their barriers. Videos and audios outputs for those larps will be made for enabling the participation of those who have difficulties in reading or in understanding written text. 2 new larps will be designed for the target group of disadvantaged young people. 7.A mobility for youth workers about experiential pedagogy as a tool for motivation for disadvantaged young people will be organized. There will again be 21 participants – youth workers from participating countries. At least two programmes of experiential pedagogy will be created and tested within this training for supporting personal development of disadvantaged young people. 8.Series of multiplication workshops and final conference will be organized in every participating country to reach youth workers, social workers and also students of pedagogy to show them the tools and new methods.

Our project was focused on forming the attitudes of young people through using larps as an educational method. Together with partners from the Czech Republic and Estonia, we have identified the following problems in today's young people: inclination to extremism, low tolerance for differences, inability to stand out and look at the situation from others point of view, lack of critical thinking, inability to see and bear the consequences of their decisions and the insufficient impact of the activities of schools and youth organizations on forming young people's attitudes. Addressing these needs must be much more comprehensive and must include not only non-formal education systems but also formal education, so that young people's thinking is gradually formed and changed to a greater extent than nowadays.The main objective of the project was to form the attitudes of young people through using larps as an educational method, especially in the field of tolerance for differences and in decision-making processes on important issues of their lives and bearing the consequences of their decisions. Larp is a specific type of role-based game. Larp allows players to experience deep emotions and open up a variety of topics and perceive them from the safety of their role, from which they will emerge at the end of the game. Due to the length of the game, the actions are reflected immediately and there is a clear connection between them. This leads to an awareness of the consequences and a confrontation of how we experience similar situations in our daily lives. At the same time, it has a great impact on forming young people's attitudes.We created the following outputs in the project: Methodology for measuring young people's attitudes - within the project we created questionnaires to be able to measure the entry and exit level of participants regarding their attitudes. A special online application Bethy was also programmed for these questionnaires, which evaluates the results of these questionnaires.Educational programs using larps - within this output we have created as the main output eight educational programs using larps with current topics of the situation in our societies as well as with current topics addressed by young people in our countries. The larps are based on our defined needs and we focused thematically on several different areas: decision-making, consequences, differences, ideologies that lead to extremism, addiction. We also pilot-tested these programs and developed a complete methodology for them.Methodology of forming the attitudes of young people in non-formal and formal education. The methodology was programmed with the portal www.larxperience.com, where those interested in this method will find all the necessary information, including materials for larp games. The first part of the methodology is devoted to the definition of attitudes, as well as methods of their development and to work with experience as the most effective form of influencing the attitudes of young people. The next part deals with larps as a method of education. The project had an impact on both non-formal and formal education.

The project is solved by three non-governmental organisations – V.I.A.C. – Institute for youth support and development from Slovakia as applicant, Plán B. from the Czech Republic and Pro Vobis from Romania. All those organisations are experienced in the topic of volunteering, its support and development and this project is another step in raising the quality of volunteering in our countries. The main need, we come from, is the fact that although we speak a lot about volunteering, and the number of young people who are participating as volunteers increased, volunteering still isn’t much appreciated from employers, so there is almost no connection between volunteers and labour market. Young people very often start being volunteers because for them it is opportunity to spend their leisure time meaningfully and they want to become useful. But they cannot see connection between volunteering and their future entrance to the labour market. Very often, when we motivate young people, who haven’t any experience with volunteering, to become volunteers, they don’t understand why they should work for free, because they don’t believe they will be able to use this experience in the future while looking for job. Looking for the solution how to contribute to improving recognition of competences gained in volunteering with the labour market must be more complex and has to include different types of companies and organisations as well as volunteers and youth organisations. That is the reason we decided to connect three organisations that are experienced in the field of volunteering to make first steps in opening this topic in our countries and bring positive change. The main objective of the project is to contribute to recognizing skills of young people gained in volunteering in the labour market through connecting volunteers, business companies and non-governmental sector organisations. There will be three intellectual outputs created:1.Research among employers and among young people to find out their relation to volunteering, if they see it important in connection with the entrance to labour market. We also want to focus on experience of employers if young people even mention their volunteer experience in their CVs and what is helpful during the job application process to attract employers. 2.Volunteer recruitment database - will be small “social network,” where volunteers and employers can connect and fulfil their needs. There will be possibilities for young volunteers and also for HR experts and representatives of companies to create their profiles there. Young volunteers will be able to create their profile, describe their volunteer experience, number of working hours, NGOs, where they did their volunteering or name of non-formal groups. There will be possibility to measure their competences gained in volunteering through connecting to application IM-PROVE, that was created in another strategic partnership by our Czech associated partner INEX SDA and that is already tested with the target group of young volunteers. NGOs will have a space register there, to confirm information and competences of their volunteers, write short recommendations or reviews about them and give them their contact for references. Volunteers also will be able to generate their volunteer CVs with all those reviews and references and add it to their job applications. Also companies and firms will be able to create a profile there and place there their job offers – long-term but also short-term, or choose volunteers directly based in their experience and expertise. 3.Methodology for young volunteers how to “sell” their competences gained in volunteering to employers. We will use the outcomes from the research among employers and among young volunteers and prepare material, that will help young volunteers to improve their entrance to the labour market. There will also be 6 business breakfasts organized in every country for networking of companies and NGOs and final conferences about volunteering in every country.

This strategic partnership project is created by consortium of 3 project partners: V.I.A.C. – Institute for youth support and development, Cyrilometodejske gymnazium, zakladni skola a materska skola v Prostejove from the Czech Republic and Finpeda from Finland. The main objective of the project is to implement online virtual tools to reinforce the ability of schools to provide high quality inclusive digital education. Specific objectives:-To bring innovative tool based on virtual reality to support teachers in using digital technologies for online learning. -To develop digital competences of 21st century within the target group of students and teachers. -To help teachers change their attitude in preparing online classes. -To support motivation of students to participate in distance learning and raise the impact of this form of learning on them. -To support inclusive approach for students who have special needs. -To support mental health of students to help them overcome personal difficulties that have negative impact on their school performance. -To strengthen the crossectoral cooperation of schools, digital technology providers and non-governmental organisations to find long-term solution that help schools in participating countries provide high quality online education in long-term perspective. To fulfil this objective we will develop unique online tool that will be used for teachers as well as for students. This solution will be browser based 3D virtual learning environment targeted to tackle the challenge of developing digital skills among the children, teachers, and other types of learners. In this online environment we will create three outputs:-O1 Virtual school class – it will be online 3D space where teachers can meet together with their students to teach them. They will be able to design their own class with various interactive possibilities to upload videos or documents directly on walls, so teachers and students will have direct access to them. There will also be internal communication system via video calls and chat. -O2 Virtual space for teachers – we want to follow probably the greatest need we have identified to help teachers create high-quality learning content for their students. It will be also part of this virtual technology, there will be “open room for teachers” created. For this open room we will design two interactive e-learning courses. The first one will be focused on using digital tools for 21st century for teaching and it will lead teachers through different possibilities they can use for their teaching, including virtual school class and other technologies that are available. Second e-learning will be focused on created high-quality learning content. Teachers will learn how to build their class with using online technologies even if the teaching is not distant anymore. -O3 Virtual mental health class – we will develop one fully equipped educational room for teachers and students with the focus on mental health. There will be four different rooms and every room will be focused on another aspect of mental health – dealing with stress, building mental resilience, overcoming fear and anxiety, solving problems. There will be different learning content created that students and teachers can use – videos, interactive documents, online working sheets etc. The room can be used for teachers as an example of good practise how online learning can look like, so they can find an inspiration there how to build their own classes. Beside it we will organize mobility of teachers to Finland. We will focus on schools that use digital content and will be able to share their expertise with us. We will also organise two educational workshops in every country for teachers as part of dissemination to teach them how to use our platform to be able to support them in using it. At the end of the project we will organize conference about digital education for 21st century in every participating country.