Underdog - Analyze, Plan, Do It

In essence, Underdog is a project about self-development and sense of initiative, in the current world we live in,
especially in the labour market, most of the time, Youth are the Underdogs. The markets are volatile, massively inflated,
and quite often, youth aren’t given a chance. To make things worse, they don’t know how to deal with this tough labour
market, and we feel like no one is teaching them how to either. Unemployed youth can also lead to several issues
originating from it, regarding mental health, poverty, criminality and less active citizenship among youth.
But, we don’t want to show participants how to get a job, no. We want to take participants through the 3 phases of
achieving ANY goal (analyzing, planning, doing), as well as provide them with a toolkit of soft skills that they can benefit
from in their professional, and personal life. More and more, soft skills are regarded as key competences and a major
factor by employers when selecting their workers, so we want to aid youngsters making themselves as desirable as
possible to employers, while also raising awareness on, European opportunities, information, analysis and critical
thinking skills, planning skills, sense of initiative, time and resource management skills, and the importance of mindset,
problem-solving and thinking outside the box skills.
We must mention that this exchange is meant to contribute in the fight against youth unemployment, especially now, with
the effects of COVID-19 looming in our society and economy, Youth Unemployment Rates are sure to spike, so we feel
like there’s no better time than now to do a project like Underdog.
As such the formal objectives of the project are the following:
- Raising awareness on European opportunities that participants can take advantage of, that can be alternatives methods
to acquire skill, and work experience, making youngsters more desirable to the Labour Market through participating.
- Develop information analysis and critical thinking skills, through game-based learning, strengthening the ability for
youngsters to find valuable and trustworthy information online.
- Defining and understanding how to plan a goal, as well as its importance. All through, non-formal education sessions,
raising awareness on the effects it can have on the process of achieving a desired goal.
- Addressing Erasmus+ Key Competences for Lifelong Learning such as: learning to learn, being key to acquire the
necessary skills to achieve a goal.
- Debating the importance of sense initiative, and how it can improve participants careers, personal development, as well
as how it indirectly can affect their communities.
- Developing time and resource management skills through game-based learning and understanding of how, such can be
a defining factor in goal achievement, personal, and professional development.
- Describing the value of mindset, problem-solving skills, and thinking outside the box, as valuable tools to personal
development and professional success using non-formal methods.
- Creating and executing a fair in Castelo Novo to share with local youth the skills that participants have learned
throughout the exchange as a way to impact the local community.
- Increase the sense of European citizenship and promote active citizenship.