YOUTHENGAGE- increasing youth participation and civic responsibility

Young people are active in EU mobility activities: they join pan-European organisations or engage in less structured non-formal exchanges with young people from other European countries and they show positive attitudes and support to the European integration process. In their capacity, they can be powerful ambassadors of the European project and build bridges across the continent, particularly from East and West Europe but also along the North-South line, to inspire others in the way they experience Europe and their European identity. Erasmus+ Youth today promotes youth exchanges, youth worker mobility and supports youth organisations. Analysis of experience reveals a fruitful and active cooperation between organisations and young people across countries.

When asked about the priorities that the EU should prioritise subjects such as education and skills, rights and civic participation, migration issues and EU citizenship, range highest for young people. These findings are well in line with the outcomes of the New Narrative for Europe. The New Narrative for Europe was a 5- year project that aimed to gather the views of young people on what the future priorities of the EU with regard to young people should be.
Project objectives:
• promotion and development of more structured cooperation between different youth organisations to build or strengthen partnerships
• development of instruments and competences for young people for better understanding and using education and employment policies advocate by the EU
• promote participation of under-represented groups of young people in politics, youth organisations and other civil society organisations by engaging vulnerable and socioeconomic disadvantaged youth.
Within the project we will develop several activities and deliverables:
INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS
1.Protect rights and liberties platform and App- this website has both an informative component in which it explains European rights and liberties and a practical component associated with an app (through this practical component young people can assess whether their rights and liberities are respected, if there has been a breach in these rights, if they are aware of all their rights, etc ). The app provides updates on what is new in this particular field.
2.Handbook for the responsible young voter- The handbook will contain indications on the criteria to be employed by young people when voting.
This intellectual output was considered compulsory because the objectives of this project are not related only to increasing voting participation of young people but also to making responsible choices.
3.YOUTH participation ambassadors’ guidelines- 30 young people in three different countries will become youth ambassadors during this project. They will be trained by youth workers and staff of the consortium using the guidelines created beforehand.
Toolkit for better understanding of the contribution of the European Union in the field of education and employment rights- we will use instruments such as story telling about the EU experiences of beneficiaries, the use of art in order to express European values, examples of good practices at the EU level, we will tackle problems such as: unpaid internship, differentiated payment among European youth, lack of information on abroad working opportunities, etc.

TRAINING COURSES AND DISSEMINATION CONFERENCES
Training for youth leaders and youth workers- the training is aimed to develop skills and competences in accordance to the toolkit, through which youth leaders and youth workers will become promoters of the European values and solutions for education and employment in the EU. 40 youth workers and youth leaders will be trained over a period of 14 days
-Mid-term dissemination conference- we will present the provisional results of the projects and we will discuss together with local, regional and European authorities the relevance of the EU policies in the field of education and employment for young people.
The conference will take place in Timisoara- also the European Capital of Culture in 2021 and will have 120 participants- young people and stakeholders from the above mentioned levels.
Youth mobility- transition from education to employment in a European rights context
-80 young participants for a period of 7 days
Final European conference- presentation of results