“Strengthening Capacities of Young Leaders and Youth Organisations for Meaningful Community Participation” is a 17-month long-term Civil Society Fellowship capacity building project aimed at developing leadership competences of young people and support establishing and capacity building of local youth organisations to participate in community policy-making in rural areas of Armenia, Moldova, Ukraine and Portugal.The project implementation directly tackles specific two rural areas in each country where youth participation will be enhanced on a long-term through 3 main structural components: individual empowerment of young leaders, capacity building of local youth organisations and youth policy interventions. The project includes intensive Fellowship to Portugal aimed at learning the best practises of youth engagement into the community decision-making. After return to their home communities, the Fellows will mobilize young people and other actors and build capacity of local youth organisations through awareness campaign, local training course and policy interventions, which will result in sustainable cooperation between triangle Young people – Youth CSOs – Local municipalities and better addressing the youth needs.It also includes Training course for multiplier of participation and Youth exchange for young people with fewer opportunities, alongside with local capacity-building activities: awareness campaigns, trainings, policy interventions and dissemination conference. In total 44 participants with fewer opportunities will participate in the project mobility activities. Youthpass wiil be used to reflect, recognise and validate the learning outcomes of the participants.The project main outputs include (1) web site collecting information about its objectives, activities and results; (2) brochures on how to run a youth organisation tailored to the national realities of 4 participating countries; (3) handbook on youth participation, fence-mending with local authorities and policy development published in Armenian, Moldavian, Ukrainian, Portuguese and English languages.As a result of the project, young people from 8 rural areas of 4 countries will significantly raise awareness on the involvement in policy process, what will result in better accountability and performance of local governments. The project local capacity building activities will be implemented in deep cooperation with municipalities, civil society organisations, school administrations, public bodies. The Consortium will support institutionalisation of youth participation models into national youth policies agenda in each country through the cooperation with relevant Ministries and other state public bodies responsible for youth policy implementation. The project success in selected rural areas will set a precedent for scaling project practices in other communities.

Entrepreneurship is a personal challenge and a great opportunity at the same time. Being an entrepreneur means making your own creative ideas happen. It also means creating jobs and doing something for the common good. Unemployment rate is higher among youth in all European countries, and we can succeed when young people will be active in the field of entrepreneurship. To make them active can be done by building their capacities based on good practices in the field of youth entrepreneurship. These are the exact reasons for our motivation to launch a transnational project on entrepreneurship among young people in cooperation with NGOs, social enterprises, companies and educational institutions. The main aim is to stimulate job creation through supporting youth entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship, based on good practices.The project has three main objectives:• promote the concept and practice of youth entrepreneurship among the unemployed youth in order to increase their employability;• improve youth workers’ knowledge and entrepreneurial skills and therefore their abilities to provide assistance to young people; • develop a framework for cross-sectorial sharing of good practices between social enterprises and youth NGOs.The project will promote youth entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship based on sharing experiences, good practices, best existing entrepreneurships particularly in EU countries.This project is an excellent platform for Black Sea region countries’ unemployed young people to start their new businesses, social enterprises and decreasing youth unemployment in the region. The projects will build cooperation framework and networking opportunity between EU and EaP countries, where youth can benefit from learning good practices and gaining entrepreneurship education.

“Raising the capacities of youth NGOs for rural youth participation in democratic life – VOTE!” project aimed to raise the capacities of youth NGOs working with rural youth to encourage youth active participation in European democratic life and elections. We believe that active youth participation and in particular rural youth political participation can be an added value for the development of our countries and communities. For this reason, the consortium from 14 organizations representing different European countries decided to develop a long-term cooperation project on capacity building of rural youth political participation. The project aimed to contribute to the capacity building of youth workers from civil society organizations, particularly the ones working with rural youth and public authorities at the local and regional levels to be able to increase the level of youth democratic participation. At the same time that focus also on the capacity building of youth leaders from local rural communities. In order to reach our project aims we had defined the following specific objectives: a) To increase the capacity of NGOs working with rural youth to influence policy at local, regional, national and European levels;b) To empower local organizations staff to better involve young people in the decision-making process of their projects and activities;c) To increase the political influence of young people in their communities by active participation in the processes of political elections;d) To improve local and national youth policies and the competencies of local stakeholders to work together (cross-sectorial initiatives) and with rural youth in developing new projects;e) To develop instruments that can support youth NGOs that need to start working with rural youth;f) To raise the level of awareness within the communities in Europe about the impact of the young generation, particularly addressing rural youth;On the local level, the project had a significant impact with the implementation of training courses, local youth initiatives and development of the action plans for raising the capacities of rural youth.The priorities this project addressed:- Promoting the take-up of practical experiences in education, training and youth work in rural areas;- Supporting the production and adoption of Open Educational Resources in diverse European languages on youth political participation (elections on local, national, European levels);- Stimulating active participation of young people in democratic life in their communities, supporting their local initiatives and active participation in elections.

This project is developed by FYCA and its European partners. The project aimed to ameliorate the recognition of youth work and non-formal education through the development of certified “International youth studies” curricula and open educational materials for European Higher Education Institutions. The specific objectives were: • Stimulating and strengthening the integration of non-formal education and formal education at universities through the establishment of a certified course on International youth studies.• Creating bridges between formal and non-formal education, youth policy and practice in order to release innovation potential to raise the quality of educational and social service to Europe’s young people, to promote career flexibility and mobility, and to assert the value and utility of evidence-based policy and practice.• Strengthening human potential in the youth field by building a critical mass of qualified youth workers.• Promoting international recognition of the youth work and non-formal education through developing and adopting award criteria that are in line with the formal educational system.Through developed curricula and open educational materials, the project targeted at enhancing the quality of the human resources involved in youth work. It contributes also to the modernization of higher education by designing an integrated course for those involved or willing to involve in youth work.The project consisted of 5 international activities (2 capacity building + 3 mobility).