"Political and wider social participation of young people is important as it shows the ""health"" and functioning of democracy, and has a positive impact of development of the identity of the young person (Levine, 2010: 160). Youth participation is also important because political and civil society functioning in adolescence predicts an individual's behaviour in adulthood (Obradović and Masten, 2007; Plutzer, 2002). The youth are getting more and more inactive, although different organizations are providing possibilities to encourage active participation, the problem still remains. It turns out that the big issue that all participating countries need to tackle is youth inactivity. Main mission of all participating organizations is to encourage youth participation, that young people realize, that they are in charge of developing and establishing the society they want to live in. Project 4Youth aims to develop skills, knowledge and competences of youth workers to increase their productivity and effectiveness, to encourage youth participation and to develop activities to strengthen soft skills of youth. By the end of this project we will be able to develop permanent methodology to improve the existing programs and serve as policy directives for up-coming youths or the generations to come. Within the project, we will train youth workers and give them new tools, approaches and will develop environment for fostering youth participation. We will establish intercultural cooperation among partners, networks and will conduct research of the situation in each country aiming to share best practices and to combine effective approaches into new methodology."

Well-Be project combines the efforts of 4 partners from UK, Bulgaria, Spain and Italy reflecting current challenges in the field of school education arising as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Our project mission is to support secondary education students in building resilience skills and overcoming the negative effects of social exclusion after the end of the epidemic. This goal will be achieved by analysing the psychological (psycho-social) effects of social exclusion in students and, on this basis, updating educational priorities and focusing pedagogical measures on the needs of students in the post-epidemic situation.We have envisaged 2 main intellectual outputs:IO1 - Survey Research Handbook. This output will serve as a comprehensive approach to research the impact of crisis stress on the current mental state of secondary school students. By exploring the psycho-emotional status, attitudes, needs, motivations and types of their stress response we will equip teachers, parents and those interested in supporting young people in the post-epidemic situation and new realities with appropriate, reliable and effective measuring tools and coping skills.IO2 - Teacher's Guide for working with secondary school students who have experienced the COVID-19 crisis: an online repository of How-TOs to support youth’s psychological wellbeing and to keep positive climate at school. This output will provide systematic information on adequate interaction approaches, training methods and specific thematic developments to overcome the effects of the crisis, restore mental well-being and develop personal resilience of students between the ages of 14 to 19.The project addresses two main target groups as follows:- directly - students from secondary education level (14-19 years) who need skills to build resilience and overcome the negative consequences of stress and support to boost their motivation for learning and development;- indirectly - teachers and other educators who need to be prepared and equipped with adequate tools and practical guidelines for interacting and supporting adolescents.In terms of qualitative outcomes we aim to achieve:- students who are better adapted to the post-epidemic situation and who are more effective in dealing with stress; - teachers who are better prepared to participate actively and confidently in this process, by being provided with adequate information and useful resources; - a positive school climate and a more conducive environment for the development of key competences; - a more resilient young generation actively involved in managing the long-term effects of the COVID-19 crisis; - training institutions in Europe which will have practical tools for monitoring the dynamics of students' psycho-emotional status and resourceful guidelines for crisis intervention.The long-term impact will involve the creating conditions for faster adaptation of students to new realities and for the better preparation of school staff on the topic, respectively for better interactions and a positive climate in the school. The in-depth and systematic information on the status of students will provide a starting point for the changes that need to be made in the education system and the resources that are needed so that it responds to the needs of the students and the teachers for coping with critical situations.

The INSPIRATION ELEVATOR project combines the efforts of 4 partners, representing three main regions of Europe – Nordic (Norway), Central (Austria) and South Eastern (Bulgaria and Croatia). The starting point of our joint effort is supporting youth workers in introducing, organizing and implementing design thinking processes in their daily interventions with youth in risk, which will enhance youth employability and employment prospects. In most cases, employment support interventions targeting youth at risk have temporary effect (Piqué, M. Angels, 2015). Young persons experience training and support activities to enhance their employability, which in the best-case scenario result in their short-term employment. Following this employment period, they are forced to seek again support from above mentioned services hoping to get sustainable realization in both personal and professional life. Despite the positive effects from national measures, the reality of young persons in risk staying long out of job and education calls for reconsideration of the philosophy and methodology of existing youth work services. As youth trainers, what we notice in our work and the work of our colleagues in youth work community is that most of our efforts are focused on provision of basic skills. In other words, we try to provide young persons with “instruments” to operate successfully in life. While skills development is a crucial factor for success, it would need to be accompanied with building the right set of attitudes, so to be able to apply these skills in the best and sustained manner. Stepping on this premise we have realized one of the limitations of current youth in risk training programmes in our countries, i.e. they don’t fully address the psychological consequences of being at risk such as low self-esteem and decreased drive for achievement and initiative and the need to build strong growth mindsets of learners. The COVID-19 unprecedented crisis on all levels would place youth in risk in our countries and across Europe in even more unfavorable situation, which would require strong resilient aptitude to handle all unpredictable challenges to come. We are determined to develop outputs that will contribute to building this resilience.Our aim is to create conditions for improved employability chances of young people in risk in our countries. Our objectives are: - design and develop methodological manual for youth workers and coach app on how to embed design thinking as a horizontal activity in their daily training and support work with youth in risk to re-/enter the labour market;- piloting the developed outputs with 24 youth workers (8 per partner country) and 48 youth at risk;- expand outputs exploitation to 48 youth workers (16 per partner country) and 96 youth at risk;- disseminate project activities and results to 850 youth workers and other relevant stakeholders. The immediate target group are youth workers. The end users of our efforts are youth at risk. In each partner countries there will be an emphasis on specific youth sub-groups, e.g. Refugees and Migrants (Norway); Roma (Croatia); Economically Disadvantaged (Austria and Bulgaria). ++Tangible results (outputs)++1. IO1 – Methodological manual for introducing design thinking in youth work, electronic document available in all partner languages and English.2. IO2 – Coach app for youth workers to develop their design thinking mindset and encourage application in their daily work. 3. 72 youth workers integrate IO1 and IO2 in their daily work (piloting: 24 and exploitation:48).4. 144 youth at risk are engaged in new youth work activities, led by youth workers using IO1 and IO2 (piloting: 48 and exploitation:96).5. 850 youth workers and other stakeholders reached through dissemination activities (1 multiplier event, 24 online publications, 16 thematic presentations at external events, ongoing information provision).++Intangible results (outcomes)++1. Improved professional competences of youth workers in partner organisations and beyond to embed design thinking principles and processes in their daily work with youth in risk. 2. Increased professional development motivation of youth workers.3. Improved motivation for learning and development of youth at risk.4. Improved employability skills of youth at risk. 5. Improved awareness of the benefits of design thinking of the wider youth work community and other relevant stakeholders.The overall impact of our efforts will be to foster social inclusion of youth in risk and raise the quality of professional learning opportunities for youth workers in partner countries and beyond.

SLEVET project corresponds to further strengthening key competences in VET and achievement of relevant and high quality skills and competences. It is in line with the individual and community needs, namely by contributing to: - providing better prepared for inclusion in the labor market students, and better prepared teachers how to properly train them; - providing employers, labour market, and economy in general on a regional, national and international level with competent and competitive workforce. SLEVET initiative was aimed to elaborate LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME for developing leadership and entrepreneurship skills, attitudes and mindset of students in VET schools. The innovation elements of this programme: Peer to Peer coaching and Peer to Peer training were applied; teachers were Facilitators; it involved real entrepreneurs; students gained experience as Leaders in real situations. Our specific objectives were: - to create, apply, test and disseminate Student-driven Leadership Skills Development Programme in VET Schools; - to promote the SLEVET approach across professional teachers’ communities in our countries and Europe; - to develop and launch sustainability plan for SLEVET Training KIT exploitation beyond project lifetime and across Europe by October 2020.The main target groups of our proposal were teachers and students in VET Schools. Through the implementation of our project we placed our target groups in new roles. Teachers became facilitators, and students from 10-11 grades took an active role of coaches and mentors to their younger schoolmates from 8-9 grades. The consortium is a combination of representatives of different sectors (public, private and NGO) from 5 countries, which is a positive precondition for: - exchange and analysis of best practices on the topic; - scope and impact of activities; - dissemination of results and their multiplication in various networks and partnerships. The approach for meeting the aim and objectives for this project is identified within the following key activities: development, training, piloting, dissemination, management and evaluation. These components are more than a list of typical activities. They are logically substantiated, intertwined and mutually influenced. Good implementation of each is a prerequisite for the fulfillment of others. The consortium expects the following project results: - Prepared students from higher grades who are on the threshold of the labor market for leaders, entrepreneurs, mentors. - Improved learning results of younger students; developed social skills and potential to be leaders, entrepreneurs, mentors. - Prepared teachers for facilitators of extracurricular activities, to be more adequate for the above listed processes. - Developed guides, programmes and instruments for the implementation of the above and ensuring sustainability by applying the approach after the project`s end. - Promoting social entrepreneurship as a tool for the modernization of VET. One of the major advantages of the approach is the option to be reproduced by using internal resources of students themselves and even to be profitable with a view to financial autonomy through the form of a social enterprise. The CASCADING MENTORING SYSTEM ensures the project’s sustainability beyond the initial pilot group i.e. there is inbuilt sustainability as an integral part of the Leadership programme. Each partner organization is able to spread and scale the Leadership programme and therefore the impact will be sustained through the very delivery and activity of the programme itself. In relation to financial sustainability during the project we will test the role of social enterprise for long-term maintenance of the approach. Europe considers social enterprise as an important driving force for innovation and growth, and as sector, whose role is key to tackling the economic challenges.

<< Objectives >>LIFE is an innovative, comprehensive and multi-tiered approach to address teacher and principal well-being with a thoughtful and human to human approach. This is done by creating a space and structure for people to come together, learn, discuss issues of meaning and engage in pedagogies that will help them in moving their experience into practice in their schools and classrooms. Through concentric circles of impact LIFE works with individuals who impact school culture, classrooms and students.<< Implementation >>A facilitator training and the creation of a facilitator training manual; collaborative development of two in-country in-person retreats for participants (in their country's language); one international retreat for all participants (in English with materials available in the participants' languages) ; 2 digital learning modules (between in-person retreats); 2 synchronous online workshops (between the in-person retreats); virtual learning communities at both the national and international level.<< Results >>We expect that the target group will: #Show a significant increase on the Meaning in Life Questionnaire, administered to participants before and after the program. #Will employ new participatory and relational pedagogies in their classrooms and schools#Will increase their ability to empathize with others and communicate across lines of difference. #Continue this work explicitly in their schools and in their classrooms#Trained facilitators will train additional facilitators and cohorts