CONTEXTBefore the pandemic, a significant number of youth in the countries involved faced several challenges. The COVID-19 crisis worsened further the situation of youth. The most negative effects concentrate on CULTURAL AND CREATIVE SECTORS. The poorest households are the ones most severely hit by lockdown, indicating that social exclusion and poverty threaten severely vulnerable people. Moreover, “1 in 6 youth aged between 18-29 had stopped working since the onset of the crisis” while the pandemic elevated rates of stress or anxiety, loneliness, depression, harmful alcohol and drug use, and self-harm behavior.In order to assess the specific needs of the youth in LV, RO, CY, we made a Needs Assessment among the partners. Based on this the most important needs of youth now are social inclusion, personal, professional and socio-educational development, resilience to face unprecedented risks, empowerment, acquirement skills & competence, creativity.During these unprecedented times, we wish to offer innovative practices to address the needs of all youth, including the ones who are vulnerable, without anyone left behind.METHODOLOGYThe project brings innovation to youth work by combining non-formal learning with these methods/concepts:-Creativity in nature-Ecocentric and Soulcentric Development-Arts (storytelling, poetry, dancing, singing, music, drawing, crafting)OBJECTIVESAIM: to raise the Quality and promote Innovation in Youth Work in order to foster social inclusion, creativity, resilience and the acquirement of competences for youth (especially the vulnerable ones)Objectives•To equip youth workers with competences deriving from innovative methodologies and improving their professional profile in using ecocentric and soulcentric education through art and nature •To develop innovative practices and tools that empower the creative potential of youth, and develop their competences to engage proactively in the world. •To introduce into youth work practice innovative concepts so that new educational content is created, a content which is based on art and nature•To increase the capacity of youth organizations to better address the need for social inclusion, creativity, resilience and employment•To disseminate the project results among youth work organizations from the partner countries and EU countriesINTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS- TANGIBLE RESULTS(O1) VIDEOS: Art for Wholeness - “Ecocentric and Soulcentric Development and Innovation”(O2) Manual: “The Art of Wholeness: Cultivating the innate resources through Art and Creativity in Nature”(O3) Podcasts: “Stories of Wholeness”(O4) Educational Tool: “Looking from within”(O5) Webinars: “The Art of Wholeness Webinars”The outputs and activities of the project will generate also other results, such as -films for every training activity-a number of articles-4 evaluation reports (for each activity) -1 impact assessment. ACTIVITIES-3 Multiplier Events (Conferences) in Latvia, Romania, Cyprus.-4 Learning/Training activities: 3 training courses (C1,2,3) for youth workers from Latvia, Romania, Cyprus) and 1 youth exchange (C4) for vulnerable youth from the same countriesNUMBER & PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS-372 youth workers (youth trainers, youth teachers, youth leaders, youth coaches, people who work with young artists, etc) from Latvia, Romania, Cyprus. The 72 of them will take part in the training activities C1,2,3 and the other 300 will take part in the multiplier events (E1,2,3). -18 vulnerable youth from Latvia, Romania and Cyprus who will take part in the youth exchange C4.IMPACT:- 372 youth workers will have increased professional competencies for working with vulnerable youth-738 vulnerable youth will have improved creative potential, inclusion and employment prospect (18 from C4 and 720 from follow up workshops of C1,2,3)- increased quality of youth work and capacity of partners to empower vulnerable young people of current and future generations on local/regional/national level- Enforced connections and partnerships between youth work sector and Art/Creative sector, as well as with the associated partners- The dissemination activities of this project, aim to reach out to a great number of youth workers, youth NGOs, Art organizations, key stakeholders and decision makers in local, national and European level. Our aim is to create new synergies for positive reforms in youth work. LONG TERM BENEFITSWe expect a strong long term benefit as we plan to disseminate the results among Ministries, the National Youth Councils, European Networks of NGOs, etc. We foresee an increase in the quality of youth work at European level and the usage of innovative activities when working with youth, ensuring thus that no-one is left behind. As a long term benefit, we envision young people of current and future generations to be empowered, successful innovators with enhanced skills and developed competences and resilient citizens.

"<< Objectives >>The Project objectives are aiming to develop by 75% the professional competences of 22 youth workers in order to be able to use the - Resource-based Human Wholeness Model so that they can support youth to build their competences*- Eco-soulcentric Development Education so that they can facilitate the transition from youth to adulthood of youth*- Mentoring so that they can facilitate the inclusion of youth**especially for the youth with fewer opportunities.<< Implementation >>The activities we will implement include: - 3 Training courses for youth workers - Production of innovative content videos- Offering of Online workshops- Creation of inspiring Podcasts- Online Summit with renown speakers- Multiplier Events to share project results- Educational Cards with Archetypes- Manual ""Guide to Soul""- Project meetings- Online partner meetings<< Results >>Results:12 short videos with innovative methods13 long videos with innovative concepts6 Online workshops(recorded)8 Podcast - Stories of Wholeness3-DAY Online Summit(recorded)25 Cards with Archetypes50 page Manual Outcomes:Improved competences of youth workers to use the Resource-based Human Wholeness Model, the Eco-soulcentric Development Education & MentoringEnhanced skills in supporting youth with fewer opportunities to develop competences, to transit to adulthood & be included."

Already in English.

"""YOUth 4 Peace"" is a youth exchange mobility project that will take place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania from 20th to 28th of November 2016 (including the arrival and departure days).The youth exchange project gathers 30 young people aged 15-17 and 7 group leaders coming from 6 European countries: Actions for Change, from Romania which is the host organization; Narodno chitalishte ""Badeshte sega 2006""from Bulgaria;Spolek pratel Cyrilometodejskeho gymnazia v Prostejove from Czech Republic;GLOBART from Austria; HUMANA PEOPLE TO PEOPLE IN LATVIA from Latvia and ASOCIACION PROMESAS Promotora de Metodologías Educativas para una Sociedad Alternativa y Sostenible from Spain. From our experience as youth leaders, youth workers and educators, we have observed that young people are faced with difficulties in navigating the complex world we are living in, where they are endlessly exposed to contrasting messages and they sometimes lack positive role models.That often leads to a personal storming, where they have challenges in finding themselves and creating an authentic, value-driven path, which affects both their personal life and their career choices. The need to be accepted and socially valued is widely recognized by psychologists and sociologists,especially when it comes to teenagers, who are known to experience stronger emotions and act according to their beliefs.A worrisome example of a powerful personal storming process leads back to recent acts of violent extremism and radicalization we have witnessed. Such acts of extremism and violence have brought into discussion the vulnerability of young people towards manipulation and radicalization. This leads us to state that young people need to be actively engaged in promoting and sustaining peace, and find positive ways of expressing themselves and contributing to society. The AIM of the project is to develop the life skills of 30 young people aged between 15-17, coming from Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Latvia, Austria and Czech Republic in order to better deal with the challenges they face as global citizens.The Objectives:1.The 30 young people coming from 6 countries to experience and integrate four basic life skills: conflict resolution, creative problem-solving,critical thinking and empathy. 2.To develop a proactive attitude for the 30 young people coming from 6 European countries towards the interconnectedness of the world.3.To increase the awareness of the 30 participants coming from 6 counties regarding the benefits of cooperation based on trust. 4.To stimulate the self-discovery process of 30 young people coming from 6 countries regarding career orientation. The project seeks to achieve the above-mentioned objectives by means of a powerful non formal tool. The participants will get the chance to put their mind and heart into playing an interactive board game called the World Peace Game which is a complex real-life simulation that gives children the opportunity to creatively solve the crises of humanity,to manage the budget of their countries and to negotiate in order to achieve peace and prosperity. Every young people have a role, such as Prime Minister of a nation, cabinet member,President of the World Bank,arms dealer,Secretary General of the United Nations,saboteur etc. Each role receives a top-secret dossier with 20-30 pages of vital information describing the approximate 50 interlocking crises that are to be resolved, and the budget and other financial information used for crucial calculations.The learning by doing experience of the game followed by the debriefing sessions will provide the participants with a full-circle and empowering learning experience that would equip them with the mindset,attitude and necessary skills to be the engaged,community-oriented and mindful European citizens that Europe so desperately needs for a peaceful future. Moreover the experience will be completed by a wide variety of non-formal activities, workshops and group work on the topic of conflict resolution,creative problem-solving,critical thinking and empathy.The participants will organize a TEDed YOUth 4 Peace conference giving speeches, will create Delivering Life flash mob experiences, will write letters to peers from Cluj community, will transmit their Message to the World and will make an action plan for the dissemination activities.The most meaningful result of the project will be for the participants to reach the world peace by collaboration, reciprocity and care for all the counties and individuals. Based on their experience in the youth exchange, the most significant impact will be that the young people will transfer their key learning points to their personal life and self-development process, as well as pass them on to their communities. The longer term benefits of this learning mobility is the fact that it will be a life-changing experience for most of the participants and which will positively influence their path and also their mission in life."

"<< Objectives >>Objectives:-increase knowledge and provide new innovative methodologies and tools to 30 youth workers on career advancement for youth at risk of unemployment and those categorized as NEETs and -equip 30 youth workers with innovative non-formal education methods that foster inclusion of NEET youth; - The training course was based on the elements of experiential learning, self-directed learning and non-formal education (NFE). The NFE supports an approach based on the active participation of members involved in the training and individual-oriented process. Thus, during the training course we took into account the needs, interests and aspirations of the participants. The cycle of experiential learning of David Kolb was followed, in which the learning started from the actual experience of the participants and later lead to generalizations and transfer. The team of trainers offered the participants a wide arsenal of tools of non-formal educational activities such as role-playing games, brainstorming, group work, simulations, theoretical inputs, methods based on communication and discussion, outdoor education, activities carried out in nature, theatrical games, meditation and mindfulness, embodiment, etc. All this was used to ensure the active participation of youth workers. The use of non-formal education methods has helped participants get to know each other, work together and share information. Working methods have also stimulated personal, socio-educational and development professional development of the participants.-increase the knowledge of 30 youth workers on social entrepreneurship and social business as a way to reduce youth unemployment and offer mentorship to NEET youth about choosing a career path as a social entrepreneur, - during the TC one of the trainers (Karolina) who has been involved in Social Entrepreneurship field since 2011, introduced to the participants the concept of social entrepreneurship and social business, and how can it be used for reducing youth unemployment. Participants also learnt a tool called ''Social Business Canva'', which they used for developing of their follow-up projects and activities. It is a holistic tool designed to create socially, environmentally and financially sustainable projects and/or social businesses. -enhance the skills and competencies of 30 youth workers in mentoring disadvantaged young people on the path of social and professional inclusion and empower 30 youth workers to work with disadvantaged youth; - during the TC we had sessions dedicated specifically to this. For example, the Art of Listening, one to one mentoring for disadvantaged youth, hidden resources of disadvantaged youth, etc. During such sessions participants gained more confidence in themselves and their abilities to work with disadvantaged youth. Having the knowledge and tools, and develop skills needed to work in a holistic way with disadvantaged youth inspired participants, gave them self-confidence and trust in themselves that they can work in this field and create an impact in their local communities.-explore and adopt innovative solutions for social problems on local, national and European levels; - we used social business and social entrepreneurship tools to open participants minds, step outside the box and start thinking how can they solve the root cause of the problem and not only tackle the problem on the surface (the consequences of the problem). This empowered participants to really reflect and ideate on first of all, what's the root problem and how can they create innovative holistic solutions for solving it. -explore new and available digital technologies used as tools for creating work opportunities for NEET youth; - during the overall project we explored how participants can use Zoom for interactive sessions (we shared with them a virtual facilitation toolkit, developed by ChangemakerXchange, so that they could increase their understanding and skills on how to run efficient, engaging and impactful online sessions), Social Media tools, such as FB, WhatsApp, Instagram. Our main focus was to show participants how they can use platforms like Zoom to continue the work they are doing, especially during times of COVID or any other extraordinary challenges when its not possible to meet physically.<< Implementation >>Our project will brought together 28 participants 6 countries: Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ukraine for a training course in Antaliepte, Lithuania. Unfortunately due to COVID we had 2 last minute cancelations and we weren't able to find 2 new participants in 2 days. 1 participant Gupta Heemanshu, which we have written in the mobility tool has already bought his travel tickets without cancelation option and as the NA allowed us to reimburse his travel costs upon providing the proof that he got contracted COVID, we have written him among the participants in the mobility list. In the annex, we are attaching his documents.This is the criteria we used for selection of project participants:1. PROFILE OF THE APPLICANT: The participants should have one of these roles within their organizations: youth workers working directly with young people with fewer opportunities, community leaders, non-formal and formal educators, civil society activists, youth exchange leaders, camp leaders, facilitators, EVS mentors, guides or coaches working with disadvantaged youth, animators, youth center workers. 2.PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: The participants should be part of the partner organizations where they should work at least 5-7 hours/week as workers or volunteers with young people with fewer opportunities. 3.MOTIVATION, - We were looking for highly motivated persons.Their motivation was a mix between personal and professional reasons and needs. 4.CAPACITY TO USE AND MULTIPLY THE EXPERIENCE AND COMPETENCES GAINED These 4 criteria defined the participant’s profile and background and ensured us that the participants are really connected with the youth sector and will benefit at maximum from our project. 5. ENGLISH LANGUAGE A good working and spoken English. 6. FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES, - A special attention was paid to follow-up activities proposed by the applicants. This was one of the main selection criteria, because we wanted to have participants who are ready to commit not only to the project, but also at least 3 months after the project by organizing activities in their home countries. For this reason we wanted that participants would either employed or volunteer at the partner organization in order to ensure the impact on the organizational level, where they can implement their knowledge and use the activities learned during the course. The youth workers participants to ""Seeds of Connection"" were over 18 years old with no maximum limitation of age. Majority of participants were over 30 years old. We aimed to have gender balance, however, we received more applications from female than male participants and it turned out that we had 19 female and 10 male participants, which we consider as a good result as from our experience it is challenging to get male participants. In the past projects we had even less male participants, so for us this is already a progress towards gender balanced group.<< Results >>LOCAL LEVEL:With the project, Youth to Youth Initiative popularized its activities, more local organisations got to know about the work the organisation does and attracted and gave opportunities to more young people with fewer opportunities to have access to qualitative educational programs for social and professional inclusion, as well as transferred knowledge to more youth workers in Lithuania. It increased our capacity, as well as partnerships at the local level. Its important to mention that one Lithuanian participants (Sandra Gerdauskaite) was extremely active and helpful in creating the impact on the local level.REGIONAL AND NATIONAL LEVELWith regards to the regional and national level since the war in Ukraine started, we had an unusual regional impact, which we didn't plan to have: project participants started supporting the Ukrainian organisation and Ukrainian people to help them integrate and re-start their lives in Europe. One Swedish participant (Robin Liendeborg) has created a FB group to support Ukrainian refugees to find accommodation. Today the group has 10k members. It became a space to connect hosting people and refugees from Ukraine (https://www.facebook.com/groups/636888250932802). He also together with multiple other people and organisations created an online transportation system, which helps Ukrainians to connect with people who are driving across borders. By using the knowledge of mindfulness, meditation, stress release and wellbeing practices, which participants gained during morning and evening rituals, many participants started providing wellbeing support to Ukrainian refugees. The Swedish partner has provided opportunities for Ukrainians to join their programs in Sweden and support them with integration in Europe and re-starting their life process.The project coordinator has given workshops and shared various project methodology with organisations from the EU countries: Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and with organisations from EU neighbouring countries: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova. Currently the different elements of our methodology were adopted and included in an international event happening in June 2022 in Luxembourg and we started working with an organisation from Germany, which focused on peace building to bring some elements of our methodology to Georgia and the neighbouring countries.EUROPEAN/INTERNATIONAL LEVELTo start with, the high level of mobility of people helped us multiply the seeds of change of our project. We directly impacted 253 people and 53 organisations from all across Europe (both EU and EU neighbouring countries). Organised and facilitated 13 knowledge transfer workshops by project participants.The project produced specific outcomes in terms of international partnerships and projects initiated by the participants. 3 new Erasmus+ projects (youth exchanges, trainings) were generated by the participants and submitted by participating organisations. A rather unusual outcome came out during this project: after discussing with partner organisations and multiple other NGOs in Europe, we realised that there is a need to train facilitators on the methodology and topics we have used during this project, so that more people could experience it, so the project coordinator together with the Swedish NGO started developing a 9 month holistic online curriculum for facilitators with the initial 8 participants joining it. The course started in February 2022 and will finish in November 2022. During the 9 months program, we are sharing methodology and topics we used during the TC in Lithuania. 4 of course students have already facilitated events in Sweden, Estonia, Hungary with a total reach of 200 people and only in 2022 the students of this program altogether will share their knowledge and experience in at least 20 events for young people all across Europe. All the students of this course are Seeds of Connection participants. 1 month after the training finished after they came back home, they expressed the desire to learn even more about the methodologies we used during the TC and to develop themselves as facilitators, so that they could share the knowledge with more people. As there was a need, we listened to it and continued our journey together. In addition to that, we have developed workshop outlines with clear instructions, which can be shared with other youth workers, organisations and facilitators, and whoever wants can facilitate some of the workshops we had during the TC. This year is the pilot year for the course, so we decided to take up to 10 participants, to test and see how it works. As it is developing successfully and the feedback is very positive both from the participants and the partner events to which we send students as junior facilitators, we intend to have a second round of students in 2023 and train up to 20 facilitators and hopefully continue the course every year or every second year."