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YOUCODE - Young Community Developers
Start date: Nov 1, 2015, End date: Jun 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Many researches reveal that lack of youth participation is a serious issue all around Europe. We are facing a strong crisis, not only for the economic threats we are now suffering, but especially for the lack of interest in improving our society, the relationships among the citizens and the respect of core values. Youth organizations have a key role in making the society a better place and have the responsibility to give the youngsters the chance to first develop themselves as better persons and then to take the necessary space for action. Besides, successful examples of youth participation are often unknown, especially when it comes to youth-led projects for the development of local communities. The project “YOUCODE – Young Community Developers” starts, indeed, from the need of European organizations to foster their capacity to support youth in being active citizens and real agents of social change in the society. The project has been planned with the overall aim of starting a virtuous process to develop the skills of no profit organizations in the field of youth-led project management. This will also allow to create a strong network of youth organizations and young leaders that will cooperate in a long term perspective becoming a resource also for the other organizations all over Europe who wants to grow in this field. The project includes two activities: an International Seminar and a Training Course. 1) International Seminar. The seminar will take place in Palermo from 14th to 20th December and will last 7 days (travel days included). The seminar will gather 36 youth workers/trainers/leaders/key staff members, coming from 12 different countries, 3 participants from each organization. The participants will have the competences to share detailed information about the support to or implementation of youth-led projects in their communities, as he/she has participated in the project with a main role. The objectives to be achieved through the Seminar are: to share a common understanding of youth participation, European active citizenship and youth-led projects, focusing on a gender sensitive approach and use of different media; to increase the knowledge of best practices on how to develop successful youth-led projects around Europe and foster the skills of youth organizations and informal groups; to build strong partnerships among the involved organizations, able to contribute to the development of future successful projects. Considered the profile of the participants and the type of activities, the seminar will be structured on a collaborative effort based upon an horizontal relationship. Methodologies from non formal education and cooperative learning will be used, since the main part of the learning outcomes will come from the participation of the participants. Practices and tools shared by the participants will be gathered in an interactive toolkit which will be used in the second activity (TC) and will be shared through Salto Youth Platform and other on-line channels. 2) Training course. The training course will take place in Palermo from 8th to 16th of May 2016 and will last 9 days (travel days included). The training course will gather 30 youth workers/young leaders, 2 from each of the 12 partner organizations. The participants will be young people committed towards leadership and active citizenship having volunteers experience or strong connection with their sending organization in order to act as youth multipliers and community developers later on. The participants do not need to have already competences or experience as trainer/facilitator: the idea is to provide them new tools to act in such way. The specific objective of the TC are: to increase the quality, the effectiveness and the attractiveness of youth-led projects providing tools for their planning and implementing and disseminating for results; to foster young people’s active participation in society and encourage them to take initiative for community development, mainstreaming a gender sensitive approach; to create a diversified and tied network of young community developers coming from all over Europe, supporting each other for future projects. During the training course will be tested and improved the tools stemmed from the seminar in order to assess the shared practices, therefore the TC is a direct outcome of the Seminar. The project will lead to the empowerment of youth organizations and youngsters who will have developed the necessary competences to take local action and to build a more democratic society. Involved youth will start a process of change with snowball effects on the whole local community.
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