Building Skills Through Inclusion

Building Skills Through Inclusion is an Erasmus+ youth project financed by the European Union. There are 5 countries participating: Albania, Kosovo, Portugal, Romania and Serbia. The aim of the project is to promote and foster social inclusion of young people with disabilities and fewer opportunities by being focused on mobility, independent living and employability. To achieve its aim, the project will have three main activities: a partnership building seminar, a training course and a youth exchange. The first main activity is a partnership building seminar in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, starting on August 26 and ending on September 1, 2018 (travel days included). OBJECTIVES: • Strength the collaboration between partners and establish some common working models on inclusion of people with disabilities; • Develop capacities of youth workers about inclusion practices and how they can put such practices and involve people with disabilities in mobility projects in their daily work; • Develop a manual / code of good practices for youth workers how inclusion of people with disabilities is possible and how to motivate people with disabilities to be active citizens; • Share and learn from the experiences and practices of each other; • Prepare the next stages of the project, the training course; • Make plans for common future projects on inclusion. PARTICIPANTS: The PBS brings together 20 youth workers and representatives of organizations (4 from each partner) to share experiences, to learn from each other, to collect and develop their best practices. The participants, with or withotu disabilities, should be age 18+ and active in the partner organizations: • 5 youth workers, 1 from each partner organization, fully disabled, such as blind or wheelchairs, who need accompanying person to enable them participate equally in the seminar, as well as support them during travel and free time and personal care; • 15 non-disabled youth workers; • 5 accompanying persons, 1 from each partner organization, helping the disabled participants. The selection of all participants will be based on common application forms, motivation of youth workers and young people. Each partner organization is responsible to identify and select participants by a set of common criteria. Identification will be through local contacts, team members and local partners. Youth workers selection criteria: - Citizens or legal residents of Albania, Kosovo, Portugal, Romania or Serbia; - Age 18+; - Active in the sending organization; - Working with youth, preferable 6 months experience with youth with disabilities and with fewer opportunities; - Open to the needs and desires of youth;, with and without disabilities; - Ready to share their personal and professional experience; - Able to use English as a working language, since this is the official language of the project; - Ready to attend all the activities of the partnership building seminar; - Willing to disseminate the results among their co-workers, on their own/institution’s webpage, on their Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, Instagram, etc.; - Ready to organize and participate to two local workshops, after the seminar. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute at any session they prefer too, as well as to organize the “Laboratory of Insights”, for which there will be 2 dedicated evenings, where participants will work together in smaller groups to present different non-formal activities they know and would like to share with others. During the intercultural evenings, participants will be asked to bring and present pieces of their culture (music, food, dance, data, pictures, collages, etc.) in an inclusive way. All project activities are based on non-formal education methods and tools (working groups, debriefings, free discussions, role plays, worships, teambuilding exercises, games, energizers, reflections, study visits, presentations etc.), which encourage active participation of each participant in the sessions. The whole learning methodology will be adapted to the needs of all the participants and will be inclusive with regard of the disabled ones. Facilitators will choose those methods and tools, which involve equally and actively each participant.