Young people, in the opinion of employers, are not enough prepared to the labour market. Not every graduate is able to find a job and even if he/she finds it, not everybody is able to meet expectations of the employer. Young people during their studies often do not take the additional activity associated with involvement into student's unions or NGOs. Most of them do not take additional internships and practices in line with their profession. Their skills, competences and expectations often fail to match what is expected from them at the labour market.The Strategic Partnership we establish aims to diagnose the problem and to reply to it effectively through cooperation, experience and information exchange, development of didactic materials (lesson and workshops scenarios for youth organizations, schools and universities), development of the audiovisual didactic materials.Moreover we will also conduct info campaign in social media and TV, which will inform young people how to get prepared to the requirements of the modern labor market. The Strategic Partnership involves the cooperation of Polish Slovak, Italian and Maltese institutions at the regional level and includes: NGOs, youth organizations, trade unions and production company.Main activities of the project include:Diagnose of skills and competences which the employers expect from their future employeesBest practice sharing and exchange of information and expertise of all stakeholders involved in the projectDevelopment of didactic materials - lesson's and workshops scenarios, which will be adapted to the school programmes and NGO programmes (lessons of entrepreneurship, non-formal education workshops, workshops during career days at universities)Development of didactic audiovisual materials - to work with youth in the sphere of development of their social and personal competences and preparing them to the labour marketInformation broschure - which promotes active citizenship, young's people involvement into students’ and youth organizationStaff trainings - trainings for youth workers and teachers at schools in order to adapt developed didactic materials into school and NGO educational programmesLocal 1-day testing seminars for youth - testing of didactic materials developed during the projectFinal conference in Lublin promoting and disseminating results of the project.

"Nowadays, young people have a very difficult start in their professional life. Although they have almost unlimited development opportunities, paradoxically it is extremely hard for them to find right direction in their education and professional life. There are certain skills and competences that are so universal, that will be useful in every job: creativity, entrepreneurship, decision-making skills, flexibility, etc. There is also a certain skill that binds most of the above mentioned. It is ability to efficient self and time management, plan tasks properly and implement them successfully. The project promotes supporting young people in the process of acquiring and developing this fundamental skill needed in nearly each part of life – time and self management. Numerous research show that ability to efficient time and self management is nowadays crucial in many aspects of everyday personal and professional lives, this is also one of the primary ""soft skills"" valued in the workplace. That it is so important to start to learn this skill as early as possible. Through complex activities, project will contribute to development of set of tools which will real and practical help for young people in the process of acquiring such an important, universal competence as time and self management. Project activities will contribute to development of practical, effective instructions supporting young people in the process of learning how to effectively organize and manage their long-term learning. And on the other side, project activities will also contribute to promotion of responsible planning and organization of learning process among young people. During the 18 months period it is planned to develop and test set of materials, which will help young people to learn how the can effectively organize their time with usage of many effective planning tools and methods. What’s more, we also plan to develop set of materials dedicated to people from closest surroundings of the young students. Thanks to these materials, young students will receive effective support from their teachers, parents and other people working with them.All this will ensure complex support for young students in the process of gaining skills and competences needed to organize their learning process in most effective way, and in future to organize their professional life in much more effective way. The main of the project is to strengthen young people's competences in the area of managing themselves in time in the context of independent organization of own learning process, thanks to the use of tools developed within the project First of all, these will be the results of intellectual work that we plan to develop as part of the project:1.Online course for young people. The course will contain, on the one hand, a set of arguments about why it is worth learning to manage yourself in time and how such a skill helps in private and professional life, and above all in science. The main part of the course will be a set of methods and tools thanks to which young people will be able to learn to effectively manage themselves in time, especially in the context of organizing their own learning2.Information materials aimed at academic teachers working with youth. The materials will contain instructions on how to teach young people to be independent in organizing their learning, how to support the development of time management skills while conducting regular activities for young people.3.Information materials aimed at parents / guardians as well as people working with young people and supporting them in their daily activities. The materials will contain a range of information and valuable, practical tips on how to effectively support young people in the process of organizing self-study and acquiring self-management skills."

<< Background >>The motivation for the development of this project were meetings between the employees of our Career Office and our students from various fields. During these meetings, young people often admitted that they did not have any specific career plans. They were often students with good academic record, involved in the life of the university and acting as volunteers in various organizations. The biggest problem for them was that they came from small towns where there was no broader career prospect. An animator of the local environment seems to be an ideal profession for such people. This is how the idea of preparing a project was born, which would introduce young people to the profession of animator, which is currently not very popular in our country. Wanting to prepare materials for the project, we used the help of foreign partners and, after consultations, we decided to prepare a project aimed not only at young people in Poland.Needs that our project responds to:•young people involved in the life of their communities. Thanks to the materials developed as part of the project, people will gain knowledge about how they can transform their current activity into a profession, bringing not only satisfaction but also income. Thanks to practical information on the animator's work, they will receive tips on what exactly they can do to work even better. In addition, the project will satisfy their need to improve their competences and skills, it will indicate in which areas they should still train.•young people looking for their career path. There are a lot of young people rooted in the virtual world who, despite their high skills, do not really know what to do with their professional future. It is possible that the materials developed in the framework of the project (especially the O3 brochure) will help them decide what they would like to do in life and how to go about using their skills in a practical, useful and effective way.•organizations and institutions working with and for the benefit of local communities. Thanks to the project, they will gain knowledge about who the animator of the local environment is and how his work can support their activities.•Local communities from different regions. There are a lot of societies that would like to develop, but do not really know how to go about it. Thanks to the materials developed as part of the project, they will know that they can find people who will work for the development of these communities.<< Objectives >>The main goal of the project is to increase the knowledge and skills necessary to perform the profession of an animator of the local environment, as well as to increase the interest of young people in this profession, by developing a number of training and information materials targeted at young people in various EU countries.Detailed objectives:•Equipping young people who want to work as an animator of the local environment with tools enabling them to acquire knowledge and skills useful in working in this profession•increasing young people's awareness of the possibility of working as an animator of the local environment and the specificity of working in this profession•increased interest of young people in various EU countries in the profession of an animator of the local environment<< Implementation >>The activities within the project can be divided into two groups.The first of them are activities related to project management, ensuring the appropriate quality of project activities and the developed results, as well as activities related to disseminating information about the project, its assumptions, planned results, and finally disseminating the developed results.The second group of activities will be activities focused on the preparation of materials planned under the project. Here, the activities will depend on what we plan to achieve as part of a given result.O1 - Publication. In their activities, the partners will focus on preparing the content for individual chapters of the publication. At the beginning, the exact scope of the content that will be included in the publication will be determined, then the structure of individual chapters and the graphic design - thanks to this, the whole will be uniform. After that, each of the experts will prepare their part of the publication, and then the chief expert will put it together.O2 - online courses. Each of the partners will be actively involved in the development of both test questions (pre-tests and post-tests) as well as content for individual courses and webinar scenarios. After the content is prepared, the tests will be developed in an interactive form and the webinars will be recorded. The whole thing will then be assembled into courses. The next step will be to test the courses - in which experts from all partner organizations will be involved. After testing, the final version of the courses will be developed and posted on the project website.O3 will be prepared in the form of a brochure that will be prepared by all experts from the partner organizations. The first step will be to determine the exact content of the brochure and the layout of the individual chapters - so that the whole is consistent. When each of the partners has prepared their part of the brochure, the main expert will put it together, which will be consulted with young people - to check if it is understandable, attractive and useful for them. The final version will be posted on the project website.<< Results >>The results that we will develop as part of the project activities will serve this purpose.O1 – publication containing main information about the profession of local environment animator, with its description, list of skills needed in this job, concrete instructions about organization of work, as well as list of good practices with usage of non-standard training tools.O2 - A collection of training materials supporting the development of soft skills of people who want to work or work as animators of the local environment. The materials will consist of a series of thematic webinars on individual competences, as well as tests to check the knowledge of people participating in webinars (in the form of pre-tests and post-tests, both to be done by individuals and to be carried out by the institution). training)O3 - a brochure addressed to young people, containing basic information about what an animator of the local environment does, what competences should they have, where to get them, and therefore it is worth becoming interested in working in this profession.Apart from the quantifiable results, we hope that the project will also contribute to:•Change attitudes young people, representatives of local communities, local NGOs about importance of work of local animator in development of local communities•increasing professionalism in the performance of professional duties by people already working as local environment animators thanks to the possibility of improving their soft skills•increasing the standards of work of so far working local environment animators.•contribute to development of at least few local communities thanks to professional development of local environment animator.