Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Youth
Funded by: Italian National Agency within the Erasmus+ Youth programme
Project duration: 01/01/2019 – 28/02/2021
Summary:
We live in situations where even if immigrants have been somehow integrated in society, interethnic and other differences among people cause prejudice/tensions, hatred, fear and exclusion in everyday life.
In our youth work for inclusion and intercultural acceptance we’ve noticed sport can bring people together, as when playing a sport together for the same team, team players are not focused on the interracial, intercultural, interreligious and other differences between them, but are focused on building quality team work together respecting each other’s strengths and weaknesses and complementing each other.
Unfortunately, so far when trying to organise systematically the youth sport work activities with asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants, partners could not find enough youth workers experienced in the field of working with immigrants and in principles of using sport activities as methods in NFE/youth work.
In accordance with needs analysis and EU recommendations, project aims to develop strategic tools and motivate/empower youth workers to develop more youth sport work activities that will explore and extract all the possible positive aspects of sports for developing consistent positive intercultural acceptance among our beneficiaries and inclusion of asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants in our communities.
Objectives:
- Improve the understanding of the needs of immigrants by exploring the current situation of theirs and the (youth work) activities/programmes provided for their inclusion, in the 4 countries (Italy, Germany, FYR Macedonia and Serbia) of the project.
- Bring positive and long-lasting effects on participating and indirectly on non-participating (youth) organisations and youth workers by enhancing knowledge management with new innovative youth work resources and training models/curricula in order to provide quality youth (sport) work programmes for intercultural acceptance and inclusion of immigrants in our communities.
- Support youth workers in acquiring and developing key competences as youth trainers (of other youth workers) in the field of youth (sport) work for inclusion of immigrants.
- Develop innovative outputs, and to engage into intensive dissemination and exploitation activities of existing and newly produced products or innovative ideas.
Project activities:
A1 – Project Management
M1 – Kick-off meeting in FYR Macedonia
O1 – Research Study on situation and activities/programmes for inclusion of immigrants
M2 – Second project meeting in Germany
O2 – Toolkit: youth (sport) workers and inclusion of immigrants
M3 – Third project meeting in Croatia
O3 – Curriculum: Using sport methods in youth work for inclusion
C1 – LTTA “Training of trainers for youth sport work for inclusion of immigrants” in Croatia
E1, E2, E3 – National conferences and workshops “Heroes and heroines of youth sport work for inclusion” in FYR Macedonia, Germany, Croatia
E4 – International conference and workshop “Heroes and heroines of youth sport work for inclusion” in Italy
M2 – Final evaluation project meeting in Italy
The project brought positive and long-lasting effects on partner organisations who increased their knowledge management, capacity and competences for providing quality youth sport work activities for inclusion of immigrants based on innovative approach in accordance with the intellectual outputs of the project.
Our youth workers further strengthened key competences in youth sport work for inclusion of immigrants, increase opportunities for development of youngsters (mainstream and immigrants) in improving levels of soft skills and basic skills for inclusion.
As the potential longer-term benefit on local and national level, we expect increase of all (mainstream and marginalised) youngsters’ competences for inclusion and intercultural acceptance of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, as the local/national youth work will be more inclusive and sport-friendly also thanks to our project results and outcomes.
Annexes:
*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.