Save the date! The project’s final conference will take place in Brussels on the 13th of November 2019, organised by the Lifelong Learning Platform with the support of the project partners. It will tackle the European common challenge of building youth workers’ competences to better reach out and engage disadvantaged youth in local communities.
Where? Mundo B, Conference room – Rue d’Edimbourg, 26, Brussels – Belgium
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15% of European youth is a NEET, that is one out of six young people not in employment, education, or training. It even go up to 30% in some EU countries. While formal education has difficulty in finding solutions for these target groups, non-formal education stakeholders achieve great results in providing training and leisure activities for young people, hence enhancing their social inclusion.
Youth workers and volunteers in the youth field play a key role in reaching and engaging young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, professionalisation and training offer is very often insufficient and inconsistent depending on the regional area. Overall, across Europe, it remains fragmented and that it is missing connections with more formal qualifications. Talking about competences, experiences, and volunteering or professional status, the issue of recognition is also important.
While youth services might be available for youth in general, staff very often lack knowledge, skills and experience to reach out to disadvantaged youth. Here, youth workers can play an essential role in bridging the institutions and its services (healthcare, social care, guidance centers, etc) with disadvantaged young people.
The Erasmus-funded COMANITY project aims to develop a new role in youth work: the Community Animateur (CA). Partners created a competence framework for youth workers and volunteers working with disadvantaged youth and communities. Based on it, it has created a training programme for youth workers and volunteers on the three main macro-areas: Emotional intelligence, specific CA competences and digital competences. It was implemented in “action-research experiments”, ie projects with young people in the last months of the project. The European Round Table will be the final event of the project where results will be presented and the theme discussed with many institutions and stakeholders active in the field of youth and social inclusion.
Contact person: projects@lllplatform.eu