Defining the Youth Empowerment - Empowerment Strategies for Inclusion

Empowerment should be considered as a process and also a tool and to increase the meaningfulness of the empowerment work with changes in power relations is highly needed. Thus, empowering the agency will not only effect if the relevant structures in the power relations which are still continuing to be available in the society. Considering power structure as an iceberg which has visible and invisible sides, visible sides indicates the formal parts of power as institutions, authorities, laws and rules and invisible sides indicates the informal pars of power as socialised norms, discourses and cultural practices. Empowerment work deals with that iceberg and deconstructs and equips individual to deal with visible and invisible power groups. Considering the youth as an experience and the empowerment as a tool for increasing the capacities of young people and make them able to act and participate and considering youth workers participation to that process and increasing the capacities of youth workers in that field of work would increase the participation of young people and creation of strategies in this field has importance to promote participation and inclusion of young people in economical, social and political life. Thus, the project proposal aims to strengthen the competences of youth workers and youth leaders to increase the participation of young people with using empowerment strategies in their daily work. More specifically the projects' objectives are; - To strengthen the understanding of empowerment aspects in the field of inclusion and its challenges - To create strategies on youth work context to improve the quality of youth services provided for young people to increase the inclusiveness and comprehensiveness of youth work - To explore the role of youth work in inclusion strategies on educational services - To create and implement local activities focused on youth empowerment - To create partnerships for future cooperation in the field of youth empowerment Participants Profile : - 18+ years old - has been involved in non-formal education context in local level as youth trainer or youth leader - Motivation to take part in a mutual learning process in a intercultural setting - has interest to work on inclusion topic of young people with fewer opportunities - sensitive on the empowerment of young people topic and willing to implement actions - has a sufficient level of English ( B1-C1 ) - less knowledge on non-formal education either inclusion topic