“Citizens and Voluntary Action (CAVA)” was a training course held between 2 - 9 February 2019 in Cambridge, UK for 31 youth workers from programme countries under Erasmus+ Key Action 1 (KA1): Learning Mobility of Individuals, Mobility of Youth Workers. The project was led by Balik Arts and organised by a consortium of partners from France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey. The project came about in consultation with the partners, all of whom work with volunteers, and aimed to highlight the importance and value of volunteering, particularly for young people; and enhancing the skills and knowledge of youth workers from the partner organisations for working with volunteers and encouraging further volunteering. Volunteering is an important element of active citizenship, where young people can become involved within their society, make a constructive contribution, and at the same time acquire new skills and experiences that will make them more employable and be of long-lasting value to society especially in the light of rising unemployment figures. Societies would fall apart if active citizenship doesn't take place. Youth organisations therefore have an important duty to encourage, educate, train and engage their beneficiaries. The training course has supported the professional development of youth workers by increasing their competences to provide more qualified services to young people on a local, national or international level in order to train young people about active citizenship and volunteering. We have used non-formal education methods during the training course, including games, field visits, interacting with experts, screening/watching/having a post screening discussion of a film on a concrete example of volunteering. We have brought in or visited a number of highly professional representatives of relevant organisations or individuals to run workshops to cover a variety of aspects of active citizenship and volunteering. These included Cambridge Ethnic Community Form, Cambridge Council for Voluntary Service, Cambridge Hub, Liberal Democrats MEP Candidate, three academics from Anglia Ruskin University, an academic from LSE (for the post-screening discussion of the chosen film), Cambridge City Council Community Development Officer, Sargeant at Mace and various NGO representatives.

"""Beyond Horizons""- Partnership Building Activity was a Youth Mobility KA1 project which focused on promoting critical thinking in future youth mobility projects as a way to increase awareness about other cultures, fighting functional illiteracy and foster entrepreneurship attitudes among fewer opportunities/NEETs youngsters, thus broadening their horizons.This project was been developed by 12 NGOs coming from Portugal, Estonia, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Slovakia, Greece, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. It involved 27 participants (out of which 19 had fewer opportunities), 2 per each country, coming from marginalized/periphery areas. The main objective was to promote critical-thinking as an essential tool for fighting functional illiteracy and for empowering youngsters towards employability opportunities in marginalized/pheripheric areas where diversity, intercultural dialogue and sense of entrepreneurship among youngsters is lacking.Specific activities during the 5-day residential mobility held in Lagos-Portugal were aimed also at sharing information about youth work developed in several European countries and equipping youth workers with competences and methods for motivating, transferring the common European fundamental values. Working methods were based on NFE activities, workshops, presentations, exchange of experiences, as well as informal spaces. Elements of the main activity included sessions on group building, introduction to the topic with several debate and experiences' sharing sessions, NGO's gallery, study visits and workshop on mental coaching followed by open space for project development. The intercultural and respectful environment during group work and facilitation over the main topic, the NGO fair event and especially the 1st Youth Association’s Networking dinner of Lagos set the ideal platform for facilitating partner-finding and networking, increase the knowledge and skills on different methods of youth work, the development of new future projects around this topic and the sharing of best practices and know-how at European level. One of the main impacts and results was participants improved critical thinking skills and increased entrepreneurship skills/employability opportunities, improved project design and partnership management skills both individually and at NGO’s level. Project’s training and disseminating activities in local communities brought out more awareness and interest on Erasmus+ opportunities and increased active participation among the youngsters and their stakeholders.These results directly benefit young people and their NGOs all over Europe with new youth mobility project opportunities on the topic.New Erasmus+ projects have been submitted in several countries as this project’s follow-up, with new partnerships established among the partner NGOs with higher quality project proposals. By fostering creation of new projects and use of the learning outcomes of the PBA in multiplying events, this project also involved more youngsters who will take part in the new projects, therefore further increasing youngsters' employability possibilities and enhancing creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship."

Mobility of youth workers ''From Inside Out'' grew from our willingness to respond to the challenge that has been rised in our partnership and specialized literature related to the alarming situation in Europe with several still alive past conflicts amongst different ethnic and religions groups, increasing nationalism and radicalism along with a global concern over the effects of the climate change. The main problem that we wanted to address through our project is the lack of leaders who would provide peace education and be able to mobilise young people to solve social and environmental issues, stand up against injustice and build dialogue among representatives of different races, religions and nationalities. Given the mentioned aspects the theme of our project was peace education as integral part of the bigger peace building efforts. Within the context of this project we understood peace education as the process of developing abilities in violence and conflict prevention and peaceful resolution along with promoting tolerance and justice and creating conditions that would support peace whether at an interpersonal, intergroup, national or international level. This project was designed to increase the effectiveness of youth workers and educators in their work, assist them in developing empathetic and creative leadership skills for delivering peace education and empower them to become active and influential peace builders. Another aim of this project was to enhance participants' understanding of peace education through a holistic and experiential approach and to explore opportunities to integrate into peace education nature and place based learning approach and methods.Main activity within this project was a training course for youth workers, facilitators, young peace builders and peer educators, which happened in Latvia, in Aizpute, from June 2nd to June 10th, 2019, and gathered 25 participants and experts from Austria, Italy, Romania, Poland, Croatia, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Portugal, Spain and Turkey. During the training course participants learnt principles of and different approaches to peace education, learnt and created peace education methods, discovered how to build peace within themselves, in and between various groups. Training program included analysis of conflicts and social and environmental injustice in participants' communities and exploring and strengthening participants' opportunities and capacities to help to transform these conflicts.Using nature and place based education approach, most of the activities were carried out in cooperation with local people, organisations and small producers from Aizpute, creating together with them, engaging them, also supporting them in their own work and building up training methods and exercises on opportunities and resources that this small town offered - landscape, nature, cultural heritage, experience, skills and crafts of local people.Simulation exercises, outdoor activities, elements of somatic learning, volunteering, creative and reflective writing, storytelling, group discussions, individual and group reflection, case studies, expert inputs and various exercises for boosting group dynamics and evaluation were mixed to create a diverse training program that would meet various learning preferences and inspire participants to become more innovative in their work.The project produced high impact at personal and professional level upon the participants. Some of the identified outcomes are participants' increased capacity to create educational activities for building inner and outer peace among young people, greater understanding and responsiveness to the challenges associated with the conflicts in the world and higher involvement in education for peace.Some of the outcomes and impact at the organisations' level are better quality of partners' educational offer, increased capacity to develop European projects and partnerships and increased capacity to innovate. Since all the partners wanted to expand their working scope in peace education, participants were offered methods to be adapted to their realities and implemented local peace building initiatives already within the framework of this project. Thus we hope that in longer term the project will contribute to maintaining peace and resolving consequences of the past conflicts in participants' communities.Another important result of this project is development and exchange of innovative learning methodologies in peace education and peace building. Through this project we explored and developed new nature and place based learning approaches for peace building and encouraged initiation and implementation of new learning programs that would help to strengthen peace, solidarity and cooperation in participants’ communities and countries.

The project aimed to explore the way in which learning methodologies based on body movement can be used in different contexts in youth work and non-formal education. The objectives of the project were:1. Provide learning mobility through mobility for 24 participants from 8 countries across Europe to facilitate groups and provide support to young people with fewer opportunities.2. Developing 24 youth workers throughout the mobility of body-based learning methods to provide support to marginalized youth to become active citizens in their communities.3. Creating a collaborative framework that contributes to the organizational and professional development of the 8 partner organizations to use learning methodologies based on body movement in their work with marginalized groups.4. Providing support for 24 participants from 8 European countries in developing and testing innovative learning methods through mobility to create impact on youth marginalized activities.The project brought together 24 participants from the eight partner organizations that contributed during the mobility to achieving the project objectives. They have experienced a variety of non-formal education activities and body-based learning methodologies (inspired by acroyoga, dance, mindfulness, outdoor education and adventure education, etc.) through which they have had the opportunity to experience their effects on which have them through the holistic approach of learning and creating a safe space for exploration and experimentation.Participants were actively involved in each stage of the program, thus contributing to each session. They also prepared their own workshops in which they created and performed different non-formal and learning methods based on body movement. Thus, they have developed facilitating skills such as teamwork, meaningful communication with others, understanding and facilitating individual and group learning processes, learning to learn, designing educational programs. The participants transposed what they learned in the context of their work with young people, especially young marginalized, and reflected on the relevance of these methods and how they can be adapted. In addition, for this purpose, they developed a series of workshops in which they took over or developed learning methods through body movement and facilitated for the other participants.The project also emphasized how participants will incorporate the learning outcomes into their practice. They have had various contexts during their mobility to reflect on how these methodologies can be adapted to their work and to build a plan to disseminate learning outcomes.

Training course Hours of intercultural dialogue is application of educational method that was developed by Mladinski center Dravinjske doline and its partners between 2009 and 2015. Hours of intercultural dialogue were carried out on national level, they included also foreign partners. As the method was a success and as foreign partners expressed the wish to gather the knowledge needed to use the methodology, we decided to prepare a training course, which will enable 9 partners to gain knowledge and theoretical bases to carry out Hours of intercultural dialogue. In latest month EU is dealing with refugee issues a lot. We are certain that with project hours of intercultural dialogue we can develope new model about refugees, that will sensibilitate youngsters in 10 local environments in this topic. As such, project should have high priority and be lauched even higher.Training course will take place in Celje, Slovenia, in the second half of October 2015. Training will bring together 21 youth workers and 3 trainers from 10 EU countries. Methodology of training course is based on non-formal methods. Project is a puzzle of three phases: preparation for training (theory input before October 2015), training course and application of Hours of intercultural dialogue in local environments where partner organisations come from.The main aim of training course is bessides carrying out good practice also sensitization of society in the field of intercultural dialogue with special attention to refugees arriving to Europe right now. Expected reach is 10 youth organisations, 21 youth workers and at least 300 youngsters.