Throughout the world, women have to deal with day-to-day discrimination. Surely, the forms of it are different, but all of them negatively affect women´s life quality and their self-dignity. To tackle this, youth organisations from Lithuania, Honduras, Senegal and India united for a common project – “Step Up for Rights of Females”. The main goal of the project was to empower women by boosting gender equality across communities in the participating regions. This was aimed to be done through a stronger role of local youth workers and youth leaders; as they can be viable community ambassadors able to communicate the project’s message to their peers.In general, the project aimed to take a small step towards improving women’s situation worldwide, with more specific objectives being:1. Identify the main threats and obstacles for gender equality within the participating countries;2. Equip youth workers & young leaders with knowledge and employable tools related to women protection;3. Foster capacity building and new social initiatives in the field of youth work related to women protection;4. Strengthen partnership between European and non-European organizations. 5. Improve the capacity of the partner organisations to protect and develop women´s rights, as well as spread the project’s ideas to wider audiences.To achieve the above mentioned objectives, we developed, tested & launched a capacity building programme on women protection & development, targeting youth workers & young leaders from EU & Partner countries. The capacity building programme included: (1) analysis of women discrimination in partner countries, and creation of a training material for youth workers to tackle it;(2) 3 training courses for youth workers on women rights protection, which were hosted in countries suffering from women discrimination (India, Honduras, Senegal);(3) 3 job shadowing activities in the above mentioned countries for youth workers to increase their capacity to address education, health, social, environmental, and economic issues related to women protection and development;(3) Open educational resources, including an online platform and e-learning course on women rights protection, which allows youth workers and youngsters to be able to access the educational content developed in the frame of the project at any time;(4) Launch of “SHERO” contest for youth to support new social initiative creation for empowering women;(5) Creation of “For Her!” validation badge to be awarded to youth organizations working on women empowerment; (6) final conference & local conferences on women rights protection to share the results with wider target audiences.All of this improves the capacity of youth workers to tackle women discrimination and facilitate further initiative creation for stepping up for female rights.

"There are many hurdles that societies face across the world. However, the reality shows that governments and NGOs can’t tackle those issues alone. This is because the nature of these problems is very diverse and solving them requires different solutions & approaches. We believe that regardless of different local settings, social entrepreneurship is the answer to combatting numerous social issues. Entrepreneurship (of any kind) can create workplaces for those in need. Moreover, it can also take on social issues and lead to wider potential benefits for the whole society. Yet, social entrepreneurship is still an unknown concept to most of the youngsters, as well as youth workers. Youth’s (entrepreneurial) ideas could be a key to progress. The main goal of the ""Social Entrepreneurship Heroes"" project was to grow future social entrepreneurs who could tackle various social problems within their local settings, as well as on a wider scale. This way, the project implemented a positive effect for both the participants & their communities.OBJECTIVES TO REACH THIS AIM- to identify the best ways to teach youth (or youth workers) about social entrepreneurship;- to develop, test & launch a non-formal training programme on social entrepreneurship, targeting youth workers & disadvantaged youth from EU & Partner countries; - foster capacity building and new social initiatives in social entrepreneurship subject;- to increase transnational cooperation & exchange good examples from project partner countries; - spread the project's ideas to a wider audience, to get more attention and to extend the network. TARGET GROUPS- youth workers, younger leaders, - work with local communities and want to make an impact;- face social, economic, geographic or cultural obstacles.INDIRECT TARGET GROUP- a wider audience of youth workers and young people;- young people who want to implement their social business ideas;- independent social business initiatives.ACTIVITIES- research on identifying the best ways to teach youth (or youth workers) about social entrepreneurship;- 3 short-term training courses in Kazakhstan, Uganda, Argentina- job shadowing in Kazakhstan;- E-learning platform to share the ideas of the project with the public across the project countries (news, updates, educational material (videos, quizzes, online orientation game - learning social entrepreneurship through gaming in Lithuania;- series of events - series of (3) workshops & discussions on social entrepreneurship (Lithuania);- individual mentorship programme in India, Uganda, Kazakhstan, Lithuania;- local trainings (1-month intensive programmes) about small-scale businesses in India, Uganda and Kazakhstan;- and others;All of this improves the abilities of youth workers to help for youngsters who want to create social enterprise."

The project tries to address two existing problems in the 3 partner countries involved (Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia): 1. Growing chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) have emerged as a huge global health problem in low- and middle-income countries. The magnitude of the rise of NCDs is particularly visible in Southeast Asia where limited resources have been used to address this rising epidemic. 2. Around the world, young people need free time, space and fellowship to enjoy sport and play. While the need for the activities of sport are global in scope, the ability to be included often is not. Sport can provide a way to break down barriers and promote inclusion of students at different level of education (higher, vocational, secondary and primary) who are often left on the sidelines. Full participation in sport activities can benefit people who are usually excluded in two ways:1. By changing community perceptions of the capability of different groups: Through sport, participants – regardless of gender, ability or background – can come together in a positive context (sometimes for the first time) and see each other accomplish things they had previously thought impossible. This helps reduce stigma and discrimination and changes the attitude of gatekeepers who have the power to permit or deny children the right to take part in physical activity.2. By changing participant’s perceptions of themselves and their abilities: Sport empowers people to recognize their own potential and advocate for changes in society to enable them to fully realize that potential.Thus the project attempts to create interdisciplinary curriculum on sport management, sport nutrition and physical education while also providing short courses for professional coaches, trainers, sport clubs and organisations that want to learn how to use sport and physical education for inclusion.The project will also create SPIRIT student clubs to promote SPIRIT activities across schools and local communities