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Going voluntary and digitally competent to increase employability and social participation.
Start date: Jul 1, 2015, End date: Dec 31, 2015 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Unemployment is a powerful threat to the well-being of young people which leads to the long-term social and political marginalisation, strengthening the feeling of dependence, powerlessness, distress and further social exclusion. The success of the previous projects carried out by the partnership on promoting social entrepreneurship enabled us to continue our work related to youth employability. The innovative feature of the project was that 56 young people with a low standard of living increased their employability and social participation through community volunteering using IT and digital competences. The project was split into stages: preparation, implementation (2 legs: Seminar and the Youth Exchange), follow-up and dissemination. The two implementation stage activities were a Seminar that took place in Romania and the second one – the Youth Exchange in Azerbaijan. Leg 1: Seminar was carried out in Romania and hosted youth peer leaders and representatives of the youth organisations dealing with the issues of social participation, youth employability and community volunteering. The activity involved 7 participants from each partner country. During the event the participants prepared the Action Plan that was realised at the next practice oriented activity of the project. This event was followed by the research undertaken locally in partner countries on the theme of the Project that implied looking at best practices of community volunteering and the best ways to approach the existing unemployment and social exclusion of young people using IT skills. Leg 2: The Youth Exchange in Azerbaijan that welcomed young volunteers, having voluntary youth work experience and participating in the work of the partner organisations. They have further developed the ideas introduced during the Seminar and put into life some of the community volunteering projects they were able to create jointly. The Exchange involved 14 participants and 2 group leaders from each partner country. The achieved objectives of the Mobility Project: - promoting the concept and the values of community volunteering as a way to deal with unemployment and social exclusion; - promoting a wider understanding of social inclusion and how to engage motivated young people to be active citizens and volunteers; - exchanging possible ways of youth participation and youth empowerment in a non-formal way to support community volunteering among young people having employment problems; - improving the participants’ digital and IT competence; - equipping young people with the skills to recognise that they can be the drivers of change; - equipping the participants with empowerment skills which enabled them to share their knowledge and digital competence with their peers; - presenting and multiplying good practices of youth work and youth participation projects that enhance employability of young people with a low standard of living. As a result of their participation in the project and acquisition of the required competences the young people were awarded with YouthPass certificates, being European recognition tools for non-formal and informal learning in youth work and volunteering. This Mobility Project contributed to the personal development of the participants. They had the possibility to set the goals in international teams and tried to reach these goals. The participants also became more assertive and confident. They gained this sense after the informal encounters with the youth of other countries and working with them as a team. The best way to create understanding between different people is to encourage them to do something valuable together. Mixed nationality teams working while organising activities reinforced better understanding of partners from different countries. Furthermore, the participating partner organisations were able to develop ideas for future projects with the aim of spreading the obtained knowledge and promoting community volunteering using digital competence as a tool to support inclusion and employability of young people with a low standard of living, being the target group of this project on local and European levels. The project has also created a group of young motivated peer leaders that developed their skills and competences aiming to promote community volunteering using IT and digital competence to facilitate employment motivation and social inclusion of young people with a low standard of living. The main values and principles promoted by this project on the international and European levels were: enhanced intercultural dialogue, active European citizenship and improved social inclusion and employment opportunities of young people with a low standard of living which served as an example of good practice for our Networks.
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