Introduction - Why this No Offence booklet?

The SALTO-YOUTH Inclusion Resource Centre's mission is to stimulate Inclusion for ALL young people within the European Union's Youth in Action programme. However, due to several reasons, not all young people get the opportunity to participate in international projects. The Youth in Action programme does not reach a variety of young people who face various obstacles to participate in these projects.

On the other hand, participating into Youth in Action projects might be a new start for certain groups to integrate into society, a way of setting your life on track again, to practice forgotten or develop new skills and competences.

This booklet is meant to be a resource for workers, as youth workers, social workers, prison workers, probation officers and everybody who works with the target group and in whatever capacity.

• We will refer to these workers in the booklet, but meaning all of them.

The target group described in this booklet are: young offenders and ex-offenders and those young people at risk of offending. A group which you will not find represented a lot in international projects and more specifically in the Youth in Action programme. There are many reasons for this.

• An obvious one is that the travelling possibilities for young people in prison are limited.
• Another one is that people working with this target-group have considerable doubts about if it's really possible to send this kind of young people on a European Voluntary Service-project to another country or to take a group of them on a Youth Exchange.
• A third reason could be that people simply don't know about the opportunities that the Youth in Action programme offers.

The main reason for this booklet is that many projects done over the past years with this target-group have turned out to be successful. They not only showed that projects are very well possible with this group but they also made clear that the young people participating in these international projects profited to a great extend from these experiences. The impact of the projects often had a very positive influence on the lives of these young people.

The organisations involved in these projects are very enthusiastic about the opportunities that the Youth in Action programme offers and can integrate these projects into their methodology and approach in order to realise the organisation's objectives.

This booklet aims to inform you about the possibilities and opportunities that international projects offers for your work with this group of young people. An effort is made to describe the target-group and the background of these young people and to explore the needs to be addressed in projects for this group. From there the link is made to the beneftis of Youth in Action programme and will step by step zoom into the different phases of an international project.

Next to that, and in between, you will find the stories of some of the successful projects mentioned above. They might give you concrete ideas for your own projects.

• This booklet doesn't give you a detailed description of all the ins and outs of the Youth in Action Programme. Visit http://ec.europa.eu/youth/ for the updated contact details of the National Agency in your country.

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