The Skills for YOUth! project aims to raise awareness about the newly launched Skills Agenda for Europe of the European Commission and educate young people about possible ways of taking an active part in the construction of a future European educational agenda. The project puts equal emphasis on the importance of competence-based and learner-centered educational policies that meet the needs of the job market, and tackles the rising rate of youth unemployment and skills mismatch by drafting concrete recommendations towards the final phase of the 5th cycle of the Structured Dialogue, with special focus on the 'education for employability' aspect.The project will witness a half-year development cycle of collecting and educating an online community of followers who then will be future participants of the Skills for YOUth! event in April 2017 in Malta. The event will collect a groups of participants who will have the chance to learn from expert panelists from various fields of expertise and also to develop their own skillset.The projects' main focus is providing information about the already existing European framework in order to broaden young people's horizon regarding the already existing mechanisms. By enabling young people to learn more about already existing tools and strategies and provide them with the space for critical reflection about their own educational background and possible improvements they can take part in as active citizens, the project will provide various ways of learning and becoming active citizens for the participants of the event and a community of online followers and multipliers of the positive narrative.

"""GR-EAT: Guidelines for Recognition: European Advanced Tool"" is a youth project aiming at enhancing the recognition of Non Formal and Informal Learning and at providing youth-led organisations with support and guidance to implement internal systems of recognition of the competences of their volunteers. In the current youth unemployment crisis in Europe, there is a clear need to help young people identifying and assessing the competences (knowledge, skills, attitude) they have gained through their volunteer experience, in order to empower them to find a job and to bridge the gap between Education and Employment. There is also a clear need to recognise further the positive impact of Non-Formal and Informal learning within youth-led organisations in terms of competences development: this recognition has to start from the organisations themselves, but should be completed by a social and political recognition. This project, by bringing together 6 relevant stakeholders not only from the youth field, but also Formal Education, lifelong learning and the employer's' field, proposes to create comprehensive guidelines which will serve the need of youth organisations and long term young volunteers, taking into account external expectations and needs. The project has the following objectives:Create common guidelines for recognition of NFIL acquired in volunteering context, supporting youth organisations in providing internal validation systems which can be recognised externally. Help long term volunteers to raise the self-awareness of their competencies acquired, its value in an employment context, and acquainting them with the identification and documentation procedures, useful to go through National Validation Systems.Raise awareness of companies on the benefits and impact of long term volunteering for transversal competence development. The partners of the project are: AEGEE / European Students’ Forum, Lifelong Learning Platform, La Ligue de l’enseignement, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Youth for Exchange and Understanding, World Organisation of the Scout Movement.During the 2-year duration of the project several researches were conducted and actions undertaken by the consortium in order to fulfil the aim of the project: Research on the expectations from employers and formal education towards the volunteers’ competences;Research and analysis of 11 already existing self-assessment tools in the youth field and lifelong learning; selection of best-suited methodologies to be used in the self-assessment of NFIL;Creation of quality indicators based on the research results;Creation of a publication and guidelines for youth organisations for starting their internal recognition process (based on main research findings);Trainings for multipliers to disseminate the results of the project;Round-table with youth stakeholders in order to disseminate the results of the project.Throughout the duration of the project consortium has reached out to different stakeholders in order to raise awareness on the importance of recognition of the competences. Partners have had a chance to disseminate the project to local, European and youth stakeholders at around 30 events and occasions, reaching directly more than 3500 people.Every presentation and direct encounter with stakeholders has brought affirmation that there is a need for long term young activists to identify the competences they have gained while volunteering. Therefore the publication together with the guidelines for youth organisations have been warmly welcomed by the stakeholders on the way towards the recognition of NFIL."

The overall goal of the project is for third-country nationals such as refugees to have optimal opportunities in European higher education. According to the Bologna Declaration (1999) universities and universities of applied sciences have the autonomy to valorise the qualifications (diplomas) and competences acquired elsewhere according to their own standards. It is part of the Lisbon Recognition Convention (1997), which aims to valorise qualifications obtained in higher education. The Lisbon Recognition Convention says that all countries should develop procedures to assess whether refugees and displaced persons fulfill the relevant requirements for access to higher education or to employment activities, even in cases in which the qualifications cannot be proven through documentary evidence. To this day, this directive has to a large extent remained a dead letter. MaxiPAC.eu wants to fill this gap.Each university or university of applied sciences has the autonomy to organise the inflow of third country nationals and to decide on the program of this group of lateral entrants. Any structure in terms of recognition of qualifications and competences acquired elsewhere is lacking for third country nationals who wish to continue their studies in Europe after they have already made their way into higher education outside Europe. It is clear that there is no proper tool to enable universities and universities of applied sciences to effectively scale up the qualifications and competences of third country nationals acquired elsewhere. MaxiPAC.eu wants to develop such a tool or procedure. We see now great differences in approach between the different higher education institutions between different European countries, but also between universities in the same country and even within one educational institution. We strive for an inclusive society, where third-country nationals are able to participate in higher education. The long term result will be a proportional representation of all segments of society within higher education.There are two target groups:1. The universities and universities or applied sciences. At the moment there are big differences in accessibility with regard to refugees with competences acquired elsewhere, not only between European countries but also within these countries, between different universities. We want a uniform, accessible procedure for all refugees and third country nationals at European universities. 2. Refugees and third country nationals. They will have better access to higher education in Europe. The competences acquired elsewhere will be better and more easily valorised by this project, so that access to higher education for third country nationals is increased.To achieve the project goal, an assessment procedure for refugees on higher education campuses will be developed and deployed by four universities in Europe. The consortium consists of campuses in Finland (University of Lapland), Belgium (Thomas More), Italy (University of Bari) and Greece (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), together with the European student organisation AEGEE. Because AEGEE also has many student members from outside the EU, this target group is also directly involved in the development of our outputs. Project methodology envisaged will provide three complementary types of meeting: 'transnational project meetings'; 'national monitoring committees' in all four participating countries; an 'advisory board'. A source of intellectual enrichment comes from the geographical spread of all mentioned organizations so far, not limited to the four partner countries. Nine associated partners across Europe support the project and will help ensure its dissemination. There are already 14 universities in Europe that have agreed to spread the project results within their own university and beyond. A risc assessment matrix is already started at the moment of redaction of the project charter, and will be continued throughout the project.We will generate 5 outputs of which output 1 - namely the development of a uniform procedure to valorize previously acquired competences of third-country nationals by universities- is the most important. This output will be finally delivered at the end of the project and requires the input of all other outputs that deal with modalities and organizational and implementation aspects, languages and e-learning. Each outcome is linked to an event. We also provide 2 training sessions: one in the first year of the project with an overview of what has already been developed in Europe on this subject and a second with a training of the procedure in the last year of the project. Progression on delivery of these outputs will continously be communicated via the MaxiPAC.eu website (http://www.maxipac.eu). This channel will be used to communicate the project results and is open for information requests of all kinds related to the project. Please meet us there !

Disinformation and fake news: it is becoming an increasing threat to European society. Young people are often targeted, and are, as of this moment, not resilient enough to take this matter on, leaving them for instance vulnerable for polarizing messages. Taking two innovative, but successful good practices, and combine them to increase the effectiveness, impact and reach that fighting disinformation in Europe requires: that is the aim of PEGAP. We combine peer education and gamification (based on inoculation theory) to enhance critical thinking and media literacy among young people, parents and teachers. On the one hand recognizing the (sometimes frustrated, stigmatized) perception of youngsters (which makes them vulnerable for polarization), relating to their environment and ideas, on the other hand 'vaccinating' in a stimulating way through gamified methods, letting them experience how disinformation is created. The PEGAP consortium is aimed at both development and implementation: piloting the methodology but simultaneously reaching impact among young people in NL, DE, SE and BE. The Theory of Change that we develop enables however organizations throughout Europe to independently use the methodology, which will be available in an extensive online platform (the 'hub'). All materials (including the game) will be freely available for learners, parents and teachers throughout Europe.

It is apparent that, in many fields such as labour, rights enjoyment, social discriminations and political participation, gender gap is a fact. For the European Commission, gender inequality has been at the core of discussions since the creation of the Roadmap for equality between women and men in 2006, followed by the EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development in 2016. The growing gender violence among young people (WHO data: over 10,000 deaths in one year in Europe), particularly millennials, requires a deep understanding of the phenomenon and an effective implementation of innovative practices in terms of preemption in youth working through digital practices and countering-hatred approach.Plus, with the presence of new challenges in terms of digital education as well as intercultural issues, partly due to recent migrations and flows of refugees, gender as an autonomous theme of discussion has partly lost its track and its impact in terms of public opinion. As youth trends with reference to gender roles and growing sexual violence, particularly in the cyber-space, are becoming a structural situation, we have shown a strong need in radically changing such a situation by investing in high-quality youth working. However, empirically, many associations in Europe still treat gender issues more as an add-on to their work than as a structural issue. This means that gender matters are reduced to a simple ratio balance (e.g. how many men/women are involved in a training course), to how the concrete accommodation of participants is arranged, or only to the organisation of special courses aimed at ‘solving’ the issue. On the other hand, the GENDERS project has entailed a systematic attempt to focus on a simple yet complex methodology to make gender mainstreaming feasible and attractive for young people and youth workers new to the topic. GENDERS has focused on gender-mainstreaming as a way to support youth organisations in assessing their work through gender lenses, would it be when it comes to their structure (board of members, decision-making mechanisms, etc.), their youth work activities, their internal and external communication, and the level of equity in the involvement of their volunteers. The focus of the project has also been on young people to challenge and break down stereotypes and to address youth who often ignore or are not prepared enough to counter traditional and inflexible gender roles, substantially repeating existing models.Our work has been to create a simple way to self-assess one’s youth organisation through an online questionnaire on gender-friendliness - the idea has been to set up a tool to convert input data into a measurable outcome that could guide young people of youth organisations to have a clear idea about their work on gender mainstreaming.The ICT tool has been integrated into www.gendersproject.eu, a web-platform which also offers support from problem identification, awareness and creative solution ideas for collective decision-making, as well as new practices to be included in youth working activities in the technical features of an e-learning environment. The ICT tool and the information and methodology in it has been compiled based on 1) national research carried out in all the project partners’ countries, which emphasised the current needs and existing practices on the topic 2) the input and feedback from youth at the three training events organised 3) the input and feedback from youth at the many dissemination activities organised by different partners. The three trainings organised within the project played a specific role in the development of the final output: participants of C1 were asked for input and discussed the methodology and topics needed to be addressed, participants of C2 were beta-testing the platform, giving further input and feedback and participants of C3 were using the platform as a learning tool, giving feedback to the final details. The target groups of the trainings were thus selected accordingly, C1 and C2 were targeted towards staff, youth workers and trainers working on gender mainstreaming, while C3 was targeted towards youth and youth workers not knowledgeable or involved in the topic yet.In addition to the participants of the trainings, many other target groups were involved in the project. The many dissemination activities and side projects of the partners involved thousands more young people all around Europe. Workshops, presentations of and consultations on the platform were conducted with youth. Experts, policy- and decision-makers and other NGO representatives were involved in conferences, panel discussions and activities to bring youth together with the important stakeholders of the field.The project has been supported by four partners coming from Belgium, Spain, Italy and Romania active in gender education in the youth field in Europe.