International Partnership for Youth (IP4Youth)

The idea of this project was born out of the need identified by the partners to work together on the theme of youth participation at the local level. Particularly, addressing the development of youth initiatives as a strategy to engage more young people in their local reality and at the same time respond to existing needs in their communities.

We have identified the importance of creating opportunities to learn from each other's realities by observing the implementation of best practices projects on the theme of youth engagement in the decision-making process. We realized that currently there is a huge diversity in terms of approaches and strategies to support youth initiatives and young people in their local context. We identified that in all the partner countries there was the need to develop better strategies and mechanisms to support the development of new skills among youth workers in order to be able to properly sustain young people in being more active and being heard in society. It is our belief that there is a huge potential in terms of developing future cooperation projects for capacity building of youth workers to foster the potential of growth and exchange among the partners' countries.

OBJECTIVES OF THE TRAINING COURSE

During the Training course, the participants will be able to see a variety of practices and models of youth initiatives and of mechanisms and structures that support such practices, as well as to transfer this experience into their own local reality. This will allow the participants to gain skills and knowledge to support young people in being more active in their local community. Moreover, they will develop a deeper understanding of the different realities, experiences and opportunities for youth at the local, national and European levels. We also expect that the project can contribute to a better understanding of youth workers on how to support the creation and promotion of new youth initiatives that can enhance the social mobility of youngsters across the partner countries. Moreover, all the participants will have the opportunity to share their good practices in the field in order to have the opportunity to foster positive mutual learning.

The specific objectives of the Training course are to:

• Increase the understanding of the problems faced by organizations and young people in promoting youth initiatives and the barriers that young people face in their social life, such as discrimination;
• Allow youth workers to increase their knowledge of different models and approaches to support young people in promoting their initiatives at the local level;
• Develop further understanding of the EU recognition schemes, such as Youthpass;
• Empower municipality workers to support more youth initiatives and create more inclusive local youth policies;
• Foster the competencies on Erasmus+ programs and other cooperation opportunities.