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Volunteer work goes Digital
Start date: Oct 3, 2016, End date: Jun 2, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

We are living in a modern "digital" age with unprecedented possibilities for communication, learning and skill acquisition. Immigrants and refugees are some of the most vulnerable members of society and many lack the digital skills and host- country language skills that are needed to fully participate in our modern society. This creates a gap that needs to be bridged in order for immigrants and refugees to "plug in" to the digital world and be fully participatory socially, economically and politically. Developing digital competence is key for Life Long Learning and is becoming an ever more essential part of necessary employment skills as well as part of our everyday lives. Our partners have been working with refugee and immigrant youth in previous projects and have seen the need for increased digital competence among these young people in order for them to fully embrace all society has to offer including research and information management, increased employment skills, social networking, engagement with businesses and governments and the potential to develop a greater expanse of related competences. Digital competence is a transversal competence that enables the acquisition of other key competences (communication, civic responsibility, cultural awareness, creativity, entrepreneurship). We wish to address these needs through a 2 leg Mobility Project that applies digital competence in a community volunteer setting as a means to deal with unemployment, lack of digital skills and social exclusion among refugee and immigrant youth. The Project will be split into stages: preparation, implementation (2 legs Youth Exchanges), dissemination and follow up.The two legs of the implementation stage: Leg 1: The opening Youth Exchange in Lithuania will host participants including youth peer leaders interested in working with refugee & immigrant youth in their communities dealing with the issues of social and civic participation, youth employability, community volunteering and enhancement of digital skills. During the event the participants will prepare an Action Plan to be realised at the next practice oriented activity of the Project. There will be 8 participants and a group leader from each of the participating partner countries. This event will be followed by the research in partner countries locally on the theme of the Project that will be 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 Portugal will be composed of youth from the first youth exchange as well as young refugee and immigrants who are highly motivated to participate in this project and to continue to "pay it forward" through peer to peer teaching and volunteer projects after the Youth exchange is over. There will be 11 young people and 2 youth leaders from each participating partner country. During the second Youth Exchange, the ideas developed during the first youth exchange will be further developed and will generate a community volunteer project put together by the participants. The main objectives of the Mobility project are:- facilitation of inter-sectorial networking processes among participants and partner organisations- promoting the concept and the values of community volunteering as a way to deal with unemployment and social exclusion- raising the awareness of the potential of Erasmus+ programmes to motivate youth to become project multipliers and entrepreneurs- increasing the digital competences of the participants- exchanging ideas and practices of youth participation/youth empowerment in a non formal way to support grass-root initiatives, volunteering, civic participation and networking of youth from refugee and immigrant backgrounds - exchanging local project experiences- creating a base from which entrepreneurial projects can be developed, sustained and propagated- to develop a group of young motivated peer leaders and educators with the necessary skills and competences to promote the acquisition of digital skills and employment related skills and the ability and support to carry through with similar projects - to empower participants to share their knowledge and competences with their peersThe working methods that will be used: research, interactive presentations, peer education techniques, simulation exercises, workshops on inclusion/ digital skills/ project management, role play games, mentorship, a volunteer project designed and executed by the participants, information on the Erasmus+ Programme potential to motivate young activists to become project multipliers, inspirational visits to community centres, evaluation and feedback. We plan to further spread our findings and knowledge to other youth organisations active with similar issues . All young participants will work towards accreditation with a Youthpass certificate.

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