The project "Joint Exchanges Network" is aimed at the creation of a network of organizations for the development of international high-quality youth exchange projects. The project involved 17 partner organizations and consists of two main activities: a Partnership Building Activity and a Training Course. The idea of the project came from all the partners, who really want to strengthen the partnership among the organizations working in international youth mobility. The main objective of the project was to create a network in which organizations collaborate with well-known partners and in a clear and shared frame-work. In this way it will be possible to facilitate the involvement of the youngsters in the management of exchanges designed by young people for young people, based on peer-to-peer education and thought to develop soft skills that promote employability.In the PBA from the 6th to the 10th of March 2015, 17 coordinators of youth exchanges/presidents of the partner organizations will reinforce the relation among the organisations, will establish quality standards for common projects and will create the Joint Exchange Network, JEN.

“Recognition, Evaluation, Certification – REC” is a six days long training course which will take place in Rimini from 8 to 13 September 2015. The aim of the project is learning skills and methods to recognize, evaluate and certificate those competences that can be acquired through non formal education. The project originates from three different but interlinked needs: first, the individual necessity to self-evaluate acquired competences; second, the organizations’ need to promote evaluation and recognition of competences acquired by participants during their projects; third, a social need of reconsidering non-formal education as a tool for increasing employability. The project will involve 26 participants from 12 countries of Southern Europe and Western Balkans. Those participants will be partner organizations’ youth workers, volunteers or group leaders who need to increase their skills related to this kind of activities. Thanks to their role, they will act as multipliers in their own and in partner organizations. “REC” specific objectives are: increasing awareness towards the importance of competencies recognition; developing skills for facilitating and supporting own-competencies recognition and youthpass writing; sharing good practices concerning the promotion of non-formal education in the society; exploring the connection between non-formal education, soft skills and the world of work; promoting non-formal education in universities. The activity plan provides for some time at the beginning of the training course to build a common knowledge base about the addressed topics. Then methods of own-competencies recognition will be explored, followed by a discussion about to what extent soft skills and employability are interlinked. Eventually, a strategy will be planned about how to create a partnership between non-formal education professionals and formal education institutions. The dissemination event will consist in a meeting about the opportunities offered by the Erasmus+ program for soft-skills acquisition, which will take place in one university of each Country involved in the project.

The project Pride and Prejudice in Europe will take place from 4 - 12 of August 2014 in Serbia. The main aim of the project is to create mutual understanding among Portuguese, Dutch, Polish and Serbian youngsters by using non-formal learning, activities, theatre and debate. Thirty youngsters will take part in the project (10 from each country). To be able to actively participate during the project a certain level of English will be necessary in order to participate. The aim of this project is to ensure that youngsters who would normally not get in contact with the countries mentioned above will participate, youngsters who are less likely to travel and participate in intercultural gatherings.Prejudice is an issue often blocking collaboration and communication between countries and in order to stimulate European Integration a project where issues as such are discussed will be of great usage for the future of Europe and the European Union. The activities will range from ice-breaking and name games during the initial stage of the project to non-formal learning activities such as the game ‘’meet the albatrosses’’ to let the group gain insight into the prejudices they might be unaware of. Furthermore activities around theatre and the use of this to overcome prejudice will be provided, such as theatre workshops and the making and preparation of an own group play.The results envisaged will not necessarily be about the overcoming of prejudice but more about the creating of mutual understanding, the result will be that the participants will leave with a more open mind and more awareness about prejudice and how to handle this. When someone becomes aware of their prejudices it might also be easier to handle when they might occur in a situation. But most of all the participants must leave with an inspiring experience behind them.

History – youth's opportunity is a youth exchange which will take place in Črnomelj (Slovenia) and will be attended by 42 participants and group leaders from Slovenia, Malta, Croatia, Italy, Greece, Macedonia and France. The date of the exchange is from 5th to 13th July 2016.The project was developed by a history student who is finishing her studies at the university and who realized that there are no employment opportunities for young people in public institutions. The main focus of the exchange is to raise awareness in youth that their ideas can change their environment and show the society that history offers a lot of opportunities. At the same time, the participants will strengthen their competences and improve their employment possibilities. It is our wish to change the view on history in the local community and show that history is not the jurisdiction of museums alone. We wish to show history as an unexploited potential for developing marketing projects which can enrich the tourist offer and bring about new employments. We will also discuss the problematic of refugees and hear some stories of former refugees who successfully integrated into the society. We might also visit a refugee reception centre, which is intended to be established in the Municipality of Črnomelj.The most visible outcomes of the project will be a story about Črnomelj, a souvenir, postcard and a video about the project itself. We will create a special Facebook page and a Twitter account with the project name, which will serve to promote good practice examples. The project leader will have a chance to cooperate with partners to create a credible medium, which will become an important reference when looking for employment.

"“Into Europe” was a course for youth workers with limited or no previous experience of international projects. The course introduced them to the benefits of international work, and gave them the confidence to get involved in this. There were 35 participants (including staff) from 8 countries (Croatia, Greece, Spain, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and UK).The fundamental purpose of the project was to address the issue that youth workers are often reluctant to get involved in international work. In the UK and many other European countries, international youth work is undervalued and misunderstood. Even at the best of times, it tends to lack support from policy makers; but in times of austerity, it becomes a low priority for funding and the first target of cuts. Youth workers are neither resourced, nor trained, nor encouraged to get involved in international work. They do not know how to get started; they may lack the confidence to do so, they may be too busy with day to day case work, or they may not appreciate the positive impact international experiences can have on young people. If they have not experienced this themselves, it is even harder for them to begin.“Into Europe” was therefore a practical course, taking youth workers to another country, in a very different cultural setting, and giving them a first hand experience of their own, so that when they return home, they would have the confidence, motivation, knowledge and skills to pass on these opportunities to the young people they work with. Through Momentum World and our European partners, they now also have access to support networks and partner projects (especially youth exchanges) which will be easy to manage. This should become a ladder of opportunities up to the point where they will start building their own partnerships and making their own Erasmus+ applications.The course was organised as a ""youth exchange for youth workers"" based on simple intercultural learning activities. Each day’s activity was followed by an in-depth review session so that participants could understand the methodology, benefits, risks and practical issues for every activity. There was also an introduction to Erasmus+. At the end of the course, participants made their own simple action plan. Youthpass was used as the framework to capture and validate learning, using personal log books and a shared “Factory of Learning” from the Youthpass Unfolded toolkit. In this way participants learned how to use the 8 key competences.The course took place in Florina, Greece with a total duration of 8 days in September - October 2016. The reason for this choice of location was to ensure that participants were taken somewhere relatively unfamiliar, culturally interesting, and physically safe. This would maximise the learning opportunity. The Greek participants were more in the role of hosts, which is also vital to successful international projects (but also learned about youth exchanges on an equal footing with the others).The project met the objectives of Erasmus+ by promoting the mobility of young people and youth workers and developing the capacity of youth organisations across Europe to get started in international project work, thereby delivering benefits to young people much more widely."