Youth Workers Academy 'Grassroots of Youth Work' was aiming to reduce the current skills mismatch of youth work practitioners in Europe by using non-formal learning within the frame of Erasmus+ program. Specific project objectives were: up-skilling youth work practitioners to deliver quality activities based on the knowledge and understanding of different youth work theories and practises; supporting development of new local and international activities with strong emphases on inclusion of the ethnic minority groups and young people with fewer opportunities; fostering international collaborations and exchanges of good practices. The main topics covered by this project are:Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/ traversal), Inclusion- equity and Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy). All educational content was created based on these three topics. The first Youth Workers Mobility Activity in Ireland was focusing on: -Presenting an overview of youth work history and development; -Exploring the purpose, principals and values of youth work; -Discussing common issues for youth, such as health and well-being, substance use, equality and discrimination, social media etc.-Analysing youth work practices in participating countries (with particular emphases on youth work policies and youth work recognition); -Highlighting the main aspects of EU Youth Strategy; -Looking into Person-Centred, Holistic Youth Work and Digital Youth Work approaches and theories; -Completing induction on Child Protection; -Deliberating on youth workers roles and responsibilities; -Considering the main aspects of working with groups and individuals;-Exploring reflective youth work practise approach (theory and self-assessments); -Planning local actions and projects to be implemented as a part of Practice Phase; -Designing support mechanisms within participants’ group and trainers’ team.During the Practise Phase (end of June-start of August) youth work practitioners implemented very divers range of activities and initiatives with young people in their local communities using the skills and knowledge gained during Youth Workers Mobility Activity in Ireland. They were invited to make connections between their work practices and youth work theories covered through on-line mentoring sessions, and later on during the second part of the course. The second Youth Workers Mobility in Georgia was focusing on: -Systemically analysing the needs and interested of young people in local areas;-Delivering practical ‘skills workshops’ based on the needs of participants;-Considering the main aspects of inclusive youth work practices;-Learning about practical steps on inclusion of minority groups and young people with fewer opportunities; -Exploring the power of intercultural learning;-Discussing where international youth work fits in the local realities of participants;-Presenting Erasmus+ program with particular emphases on Youth Mobility Activities;-Sharing 'Good Practice Examples of Erasmus+ projects and getting 'deeper' into this program;-Getting an overview of the CoE Recommendations for Youth Work; -Looking at tips for project designing, planning and management; -Exploring possible partnership and collaboration opportunities within participants group; -Drafting further projects to be delivered in local communities or/and internationally; -Creating space and time for self-assessments.Based on the participants self- assessment process and systematic analyses of self-assessment forms we identified that participants have felt the biggest growth after the first training, as it covered the major theoretical part of the whole project. After the Practice Phase, participants felt the decrease in their confidence as they started using developed competences into the practice some found difficult to make links between theory and practice. However, at the end of the course participants have had the major up-lift as space was created for participants to re-organize everything that was provided through the full duration of this project: the gotten knowledge, developed competences, changed values and experience from the practice phase. As a result of taking part in this project participants are able to deliver youth work activities with strong focus on inclusion of the ethnic minority groups and young people with fewer opportunities. Subsequently, participants competences in Youth Work and confidence as youth work practitioners have improved, as well as their attitude to highlighting the issues around the quality of local and international Youth Work.

"<< Objectives >>Due to globalization and migration our societies in Europe become more and more diverse. The field of non-formal education must take this challenge and need to integrate this diversity into its' project formats. Old narratives needs to be uncovered and views from multiple perspectives on historical events have to be included. The Holocaust as a focal point will be examined from multiple perspectives and conclusions on marginalized groups and discrimination in our current societies will be drawn from that. The project strives for the consolidation of tolerance, giving an impulse on critical thinking as well as raising awareness towards diversity and againt discrimination. Therefore the following items can be defined as the main objectives of the project:- teaching and reflection of methods of historical and civic education- raising awareness towards diversity and the creation of tolerance (of ambiguity)- strengthening awareness towards discrimination- development of critical thinking- activating and strengthening of participants multiple potentials<< Activities >>""Entangled History as a perspective for non-formal education"" is a series of events consisting of a training for youth workers and an international youth meeting. During the project 18 youth workers and 30 young people from Germany, Poland and Ukraine will meet in Kreisau/Krzyzowa and Oswiecim in order to get to know, exchange and adjust methods for the historical and political nonformal education viewed in the context of a growing diversity in our societies. During the training participants learn new methods and adjust old ones that can be applied and disseminate in the following international youth meeting as well as in the every day work of the youthworkers (local communities). All methods will be published in a handbook and on a project blog.<< Impact >>We are expecting a positive impulse on the individual development of the involved youth workers and youth. The exchange and the involvement in an intercultural project as well as the application of foreign languages will motivate them and serve them as qualifications that improves their employabilities. Content-wise we are expecting a coming to terms of local cultures of remembering connected to the Holocaust. Youth workers shall serve the new methods as tools in order to organise and carry out local micro projects with local youth. Those projects will use the approach of Entangled History and contribute to the coming to terms of unknown local stories of the past. Within the partner organisations competences will be enlarged and methodolgies will be further developped. Employees that are involved in the project will teach and disseminate their new skills and knowledge about methods to their colleagues. The effect of the project will thereby be multiplied. Also the young participants will share their experiences with their peers and will organise their own workshops.The project blog (http://historycroisee.strikingly.com/) where the entire project will be presented as well as an enlargement of the methodological handbook ""Histoire Croisée as a perspective for non-formal education"" (https://www.kreisau.de/fileadmin/kreisau/Publikationen/180419_KI_HISTORIE_PUB_SINGELPAGE.pdf), including new methods of the participating youth workers (applied at the micro projects and the youth meeting), are representing the concrete outcome of the project Entangled History."

"<< Objectives >>International youth work has the mission to enable all young people - regardless of their origin, their ethnic and cultural affiliation, their gender or their impairments - to have access to educational opportunities and equal participation. In other words: international youth work has an inclusive educational mission. This is based on human rights and youth policy and is also an important priority of the Erasmus+ program. The project ""Diversity Weeks"" set itself the goal to contribute to the implementation of this mission through the realization of four international inclusive youth meetings. The following activities were planned and implemented: A1 - The III International inclusive dance festival in IJBS Krzyzowa/ Poland, with the participation of partners from Poland, Germany, Spain, Greece, Slovenia, Romania, Estonia, Turkey, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. A total of 101 people were involved in the activity, among them 44 participants with fewer opportunities than their peers due to disabilities and social, geographical and economic disadvantages. A2 - Inclusive International Youth Exchange Building Bridges goes Greece: Diversity in Prinos/Thassos, Greece. Here partners from Poland, Germany, Romania, Greece, Estonia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic participated. A total of 95 people were involved here, including 46 young people with fewer opportunities. A3 - Inclusive International Youth Exchange Bridging: Identity in IJBS Krzyzowa/Poland with the participation of partners from Poland, Germany, Romania and Ukraine. Here 57 people were involved. Among the participants 46 young people with fewer opportunities. A4 - Inclusive International Youth Meeting Bridging: Emotions at the Education and Meeting Center Schloss Trebnitz with partners from Germany, Poland and Estonia. Here 47 people were involved, among them 33 young people with fewer opportunities. The aim of all the activities was to implement inclusive and diversity-sensitive educational opportunities for young people, which were characterized by the diversity of their participants and wanted to create and promote a space for encounter, dialogue and joint learning processes between very different young people of our society. This required reaching and involving different groups of young people through the partner organizations. At the same time, it was an important goal to reduce participation barriers to the maximum, so that young people participated effortlessly, fairly and equally, regardless of their impairments and social barriers. In terms of social inclusion, the projects involved young people with and without disadvantages and disabilities. As important as it was to reduce barriers to participation, it was also important to avoid positive discrimination and deficit-oriented approaches. Young representatives of our society were given the opportunity to engage in dialogue, to approach and change perspectives. Together they dealt with social diversity as well as individual and social identity. By involving experienced language mediators and workshop leaders, it was possible to create pedagogical activities tailored to the target groups, in which the young people could engage with each other, work and learn together, and learn more about each other. Through the diversity in the groups, there were different levels on which contact and relationships could develop, which led to social lines of difference, such as age, disability, gender, slowly dissolving and hardly playing a role among the participants. Instead, spaces emerged in which commonalities shaped relationships, communication was possible despite language differences and abilities, and different ways of thinking, acting and being aroused curiosity to learn and understand more. One phrase that was heard again and again from the participants but also from the professionals was, ""It could be so simple."" - What was meant was the wish for a life in a more open, inclusive society in which everyone can participate equally according to their individual possibilities and abilities and is valued.<< Implementation >>Four activities were carried out in the inclusive international project Diversity Weeks. The project involved 22 partner organizations, 20 of which participated in the activities with youth groups in different constellations. Two partners dropped out in A4 due to the Corona pandemic. A1-A3 were projects with neighboring countries, A4 was an activity with program countries only. All activities were preceded by an extensive planning phase. Preparatory meetings in presence were deliberately avoided, as the projects themselves had a high mobility (with air travel) and it seemed unnecessary to the partners to cause additional travel here. Due to the close cooperation among the partners, there was in most cases an open and trusting relationship, which was reflected in the preparation process. New partners were accompanied more closely and were openly welcomed and supported in the partner consortium. Thus, the preparation took place online. There were meetings with the partners and also team members, where all important aspects and elements of the project management were discussed, agreed and documented. In addition, the partners were provided with various documents that simplified and structured their preparation in the national contexts. The partners themselves organized in their national groups the preparation of the participants, the information of the educators, the implementation of the public relations. They were also responsible - in coordination with the KI as coordinating organization - for the travel preparations and communicated all necessary information, especially regarding accessibility and participant needs, to the coordinating and hosting organizations. The partners were responsible for preparing the participants. As all processes in the project were participatory, they actively involved the young people in the preparation as much as possible, so that their wishes, ideas and suggestions could already be incorporated into the draft programs. All four exchanges had an inclusive and diversity-oriented profile. The acquisition of participants was also geared to this. Accordingly, all projects were planned from the outset in such a way that barriers to participation were reduced to a minimum. This required accessibility of the venues, catering options, travel and transportation options, but also methodological diversity and pedagogical expertise in the projects. In total, 301 people participated in the four activities, of which 170 people fell into the category of participants with fewer opportunities (experiencing disadvantage). These include young people from difficult social backgrounds, from extended families, foster families, children's homes, from structurally weak rural areas, with refugee and migration backgrounds, with economic disadvantages, with pre-existing health conditions, with behavioural disorders, etc. Many of them rarely had the opportunity to experience abroad, travel and meet young people from other countries before the projects. Among the 170 people, there are also young people with disabilities (110 explicitly fall into this category), who can also be classified as disadvantaged due to their impairments. Among the people with disabilities were people with visible and invisible disabilities, including, among others, mobility impairments, visual and hearing impairments, mental and psychological illnesses/disorders, intellectual disabilities, learning difficulties - to name just a few examples. There was no limitation in the age of participants. All activities allowed the participation of young people across the age spectrum of the Erasmus+ program.In order to ensure fair and equal participation for all participants, in some cases an increased supervision ratio and in some cases accompanying persons were necessary. It was also necessary to have a large team of experienced language mediators and workshop leaders who could accompany the participants specifically and individually in their learning and experience processes. The follow-up of the encounter and the learning experiences took place in the national groups. The impact of all activities was great on the different participants, even if different. Under point 9 some quotes of the participants are included. Many participants are interested in follow-up projects and regularly ask the partners. Overall, all partners plan further collaborations and look forward to working together. In A1 and A2, project movies were made, which are used by the partners to disseminate inclusive youth work, to inspire and motivate other professionals to become more inclusive themselves in their activities. The experiences are also used in trainings for professionals, which are implemented in the network.<< Results >>The non-formal program activities were on offer to the young people and provided the framework for their learning and development processes. How far the young people got involved in the possible learning and development experiences and what they took away with them was at their disposal. They were professionally accompanied in this process. The following impacts and outcomes can be summarized from participant and partner reports: * travelling to another European country and getting to know other young people from Europe allowed for many learning moments. The young people learned more about the lives of young people and peers in other European countries, learned more about exciting differences, but also experienced that they are not alone in their situation in the world. It created a sense of a European community where people can also visit and meet again, which was the case for some participants afterwards. Part of the intercultural dialogue and sensitization was also the examination of language. Although language mediation in ten European languages can sometimes be tedious, at the same time it is exciting to recognize similar language elements or even similarities in the Slovenian, Czech, Ukrainian and Polish languages. At the same time, languages like Estonian or Turkish suddenly sound absolutely foreign and make one curious to understand them. * In the mixed groups of participants, the learners were confronted with different subcultures in which they sometimes found themselves and others which they had to approach in order to understand them better. Here, a multifaceted intercultural sensitization took place on an individual and collective level. * The nature of the encounter of the four activities and the structure of the program with a lot of mixed and always changing group activities was enormously important for the participants. In a large group, those who are more withdrawn, quiet, or who don't perceive themselves as belonging anyway tend to get lost. The small group formats enabled the different participants to approach each other in a protected setting and to engage with each other. Common tasks and non-formal methods created a context in which the young people had to deal with each other. This enabled them to approach and accept each other better and faster. Friendships and human relationships developed, leading to a stronger sense of group and belonging. * The participants experienced diversity as something positive in the activities. They were able to perceive how much they could learn from each other, even where they might not have expected it. This influenced their self-perception, their thoughts and actions, but also the images they had of others, and in many cases led to a much more positive attitude towards people who had previously seemed ""weird"" to them. It gave them the opportunity to confront their own prejudices and stereotypes. * Participation in the various activities promoted personality development in terms of self-confidence, confidence in one's own abilities, social skills, openness to new experiences, intercultural skills and the formation of one's own identity. During the activities, different competencies were strengthened and promoted among the participants, such as. - Social, inter- and transcultural competence - through the time spent together, participants learned about their own and other cultures in diversity and practised tolerance of ambiguity towards others,- Self-awareness and a positive self-image were fostered through exposure to one's own skills and abilities, especially when trying and mastering new things; - through small-group activities, joint decision-making processes, and creative freedom, specifically supported social skills such as the ability to work as a team, compromise, and exchange ideas on an equal footing, - Through the creative-cultural workshops, creativity and initiative of the young people were encouraged, as they were able to contribute and implement their own ideas and aspirations, - The examination of diversity and the non-formal approaches in the project promoted critical thinking approaches. Through the experiences and the positive experiences, own patterns of thinking and acting could be questioned and adapted. - The workshops offered the young people new spaces of experience. They dared to try new things and break through their own barriers and blockades. This encouraged them in their actions, promoted self-acceptance and self-empowerment, and allowed them to discover new possibilities for action,"

After successful European Youth Exchanges in the past ten years, we are glad that a new youth exchange project “Future in Progress – We are Experts for Europe” from July 30th – August 8th 2018, takes place in the educational center and youth residence “Bildungs- und Freizeitzentrum Wolmirstedt”. We are happy that eight partner organizations (Armenia, Finland, Hungarian, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Ukraine) share this idea with us. Together we created this project step by step. The project addresses youngsters at the age of 14 to 18 in Europe. There will be 5 participants attending from each country in addition to one leader, 54 participants in total. The themes of the Youth Exchange generated from the title “Future in Progress – We are Experts for Europe”. It deals with our own experience, expectations and ideas, while discussing refreshing frankness, cultural bias, ideology, perspectives and different outlooks on the world we live in. The focus of the workshops and the Youth Exchange is our life in Europe. A brain storming shows the personal positions. An ultimate trust check gives the participants the possibility to build sympathy, friendship and solidarity to “the others”. The methods of the workshops are historical workshop, training to find serious arguments and take part in a discussion actively. Examples for the methods are theater like Forum Theater, median workshop, design a presentation, intercultural games like “One World of Diversity” and trips to places of democracy and daily life. Interactive games and outdoor activities will be the energizers of the workshops. The project is focused on cooperation on living with active citizenship, with the European consciousness and democracy. Marginalization should be an alien concept for the participants in our Youth Exchange. We expect to increase the key competences of the participants, their understanding for different cultures, traditions and religions, their interest in peace, freedom and democracy, and also offering them the opportunity of having fun while learning. Very important highlights of the exchange are to meet young people of different countries, to organize spontaneous events like karaoke and an intercultural evening, and last but not least to visit Germany. A supporting is applied be Erasmus+ and the Federation of Saxony – Anhalt. Together they give the great opportunities to realize these project.

“Once upon today… in Europe” is a series that consists of a training and a youth meeting. In 2016 the training and the youth meeting gave 30 multipliers working in the field of historical and political education and 30 young people from Estonia, Germany, Moldava, Poland, Romania and Ukraine the opportunity to deal with historical narratives concerning Europe and the countries they were coming from. Narratives include myths, official presentations in texts and images, but especially commonly culturally shared interpretations of important historical events of a nation.Current events such as the refugee crisis and the war in Ukraine [ohne Komma] served as an occasion to deal intensively with the historical narratives in participants’ home countries and the European Integration. The most important objective of the project was initiating an intercultural dialogue that is based on a deepened understanding of the perception and interpretation of past and future in the participating countries. At the same time the training and the youth meeting encouraged to reflect on one’s identity in a European society which is shaped by migration and diversity and to develop an understanding and tolerance towards living together with people having different national, ethnical and religious backgrounds. In the course of the training youth workers developed methods based on non-formal education in the field of European cultures of remembering, with reference to innovative and learner concentrated pedagogical approaches. Youth workers used these methods and carry on working with them primarly in the following youth meeting and later on in their own field of work with young people in their local communities. As a consequence of the training multipliers developed micro projects that were carried out and realized in their field of work. Those micro projects were documented and constantly updated on a project blog. Additionally it promoted an exchange of ideas and experiences among the participants.