Project organizations working in the field of anti-discrimination education feel the need to update their methods and match them better to the individual situation in a given country's region, as well as to strengthen and prepare better their staff in this issue - especially In the current situation of social or ethnic tensions. We want to involve three institutions, of which the 9dwunastych association in Białystok (Poland) and the Anne Frank Educational Center (AFEC) in Frankfurt Main (Germany) represent organizations working directly in the field of anti-discrimination work. The involvement of the big local authority like D.G.A.S.P.C. in Oradea (Romania) will in turn help to work out the tools, that enable better inclusion of excluded groups and work with the majority group from a public institution perspective. We want the model developed in this way can be used by NGOs and public institutions in other countries. All partner organizations work in regions and places with very diverse structures - Frankfurt am Main in Germany is one of the most multi-ethnic cities in Europe, the Podlasie region in Poland has a significant Orthodox minority, and a significant share of minorities such as Belarusians, Ukrainians and Chechens and is at the same time a rural region. The city Oradea in Romania in the Bihor region has a significant share of the Hungarian and Romani minorities. The Frankfurt am Main region is economically one of the richest regions in Europe, while Bialystok and Oradea are the capitals of some of the poorest regions in the EU in terms of GDP. Each of the partner organisations has a slightly different area of activity that complement each other well - each of them will be presented during a three-day international workshop. During each workshop, we want to focus on the selected part of anti-discrimination work. The thematic areas for participating countries are as follow:1. Poland - gender equality, working with youth in the area of anti-discrimination and diversity managment;2. Germany - antisemitism, racism, islamophobia and hate speech; 3. Romania - anti-discrimination in context of inclusion of minorities (like Roma people), inclusion through education (like instruments for educating iliterated adults). During each workshops we will match anti-discrimination tools and methods to the individual situation in the countries concerned and create scenarios, that can be applied in their situation. We also want to subject them to reflection, resulting from the natonal, socio-historical and economic specifics and to test them in international conditions of the countries of Western, Eastern and Southern Europe. So in each organization there will be a team of people forming a working group - (from 7 till 12 people) who will take part in international workshops rotatable. The methods and knowledge gained there will be tested in the time between the international workshops (field work) in working groups. During this time, people from disadvantaged groups with whom the project organisations cooperate will be invited to give feedback. Scenarios of the activities carried out during each three-day international workshop, tested additionally in time between the international workshops, will constitute a basic part of the e-book. The e-book will be one of the main results of our activities, we plan to develop, as well as the increase in the competence of our staff. The e-book will be an element with which each organization will be able to reach a significant number of potential recipients, especially since the organizations in the project have a wide network of contacts - institutions and people they can reach. The 9dwunastych association has contacts with all the most important organisations dealing with anti-discrimination education in the region and country. The partner in Romania DGASPC is a very large public aid institution and AFED in Frankfurt am Main is one of the most well-known institutions dealing with anti-discrimination education in Germany.Our basic working tool will be various methods of anti-discrimination education. We treat them broadly - because anti-discrimination education is not only a set of methods concerning majority-minority and disadvantaged groups. But it is also a very important and effective tool for the social inclusion and empowerment of these groups. In order to build a society that is open and able to function in a diverse social context and to reflect more widely on the benefits of anti-discrimination education.

People working with vulnerable groups of youth are struggling on a daily basis with the problem of maintaining work-life balance. Youth with physical disabilities, behavioral problems or intellectual disabilities, youth from alternative care, NEET youth and minorities face difficult problems in their everyday lives that can trigger strong feelings of empathy, sadness, helplessness or anger in youth workers. It can be very hard for youth workers to get proper rest after work and don’t think about distressing problems that young people they work with face. Most jobs and many life experiences generate some degree of stress but it seems that this problem is exacerbated among individuals working in emotionally demanding environments. The professional sphere often spills over into worker’s private life, and worker experiences a burnout. In order to achieve work sustainability, workers should find a balance between work and private life. Considering that we are lacking tools to help youth workers to alleviate the stress and emotions arising from such emotionally demanding work, development of a modern tool that is easily applicable and simple to use is of utmost necessity.Youth workers who learn how to take care of their mental health will be able to teach these skills to young people they work with too. When adopted, these skills make our daily lives more meaningful and enjoyable, even when we are faced with difficult situations and circumstances. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a form of cognitive-behavioural therapy, an empirically based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies with commitment and behavior-change strategies to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is the ability to stay in contact with the present moment regardless of unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, while choosing one's behaviors based on the situation and personal values. Studies show that psychological flexibility is associated with quality of life and mental well-being.Unfortunately, the traditional face-to-face psychotherapy is usually too expensive or inaccessible to youth workers working with vulnerable groups of youth, especially to those living in rural or poor areas. Computerized cognitive-behavioural treatments show promising results in treating anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as in development of healthy ways of dealing with stress. That is why this project will use this modern approach to enable greater number of youth workers to learn and implement basic principles of ACT treatment for their own self-development and in their everyday work with young people.The objective of this project is to introduce psychological flexibility skills into youth work practices with the aim of empowering professional capacities of youth workers that work with vulnerable groups of young people. As a result, they will be able to cope with stress more successfully, protect themselves from burn-out and transfer those skills to the young people they work with. This objective will be achieved by development of an intellectual output: innovative tool for increasing psychological flexibility that will consist of 2 parts: workshop curriculum that will be used in synergy with the mobile application containing short excercise based on the principles of ACT therapy. The app will be available for use in 3 different ways: individually by youth worker, individually by the young person, or in group work.Target group of this project are youth workers from 5 participating countries who will take part in producing the described intellectual output, piloting it and disseminating it to the relevant stakeholders. In the beginning of the project, 10 team members will take part in joint staff training where they will learn the basics of ACT treatment that will enable them to develop the content for the curriculum and the app. The developed materials will be tested and revised in the second joint staff training that will be organized for additional 15 youth workers who will implement national piloting of the materials afterwards. Through these trainings, youth workers will develop their own psychological flexibility and with the help of the developed intellectual output, they will be able to transfer these skills in a systematic and easy way to young people they work with. The developed curriculum and mobile app will be freely available in the project website and widely disseminated to other youth workers who want to develop better ways of dealing with stress and transfer these skills to youth they work with. The expected impact and long-term effect of this project is raising awareness of the stress that youth workers who work with vulnerable groups of youth deal with in their everyday work, of the importance of adopting healthy ways of dealing with stress and taking care of own mental health for lifelong sustainability, especially in such high-demanding emotional work.

In the context of transition from institutional to community based care of children, all CEE countries face the challenge of changing the institutional culture, re-training and continuing competence development of careers and foster parents who look after the children facing multiple disadvantages and being highly exposed to the risk of social inclusion. To facilitate the development of transversal (social, creative and recreational) and professional skills of the carers and foster parents, who must be able to facilitate group living, must be excellent communicators and advocates, have to know how to access a wide range of child protection and child care legislation information, and also have to be able to create a friendly and nurturing environment by mastering the domestic skills this requires, the present project addressed the following objectives:1. Development of professional competence of trainers of carers and foster parents by offering them training curriculum, training materials and best practice models to be used in their daily work.2. Development of the transversal skills of carers and foster parents by training them in fields such as: handling challenges, working with others, verbal and non-verbal communication, creative thinking, critical thinking, learning to learn, planning own work, problem-solving , etc.Besides the immanent development of project management staffs' competencies, 12 specialists (3 from each country, psychologists, social workers) have been trained in the project on how to use the Curriculum, the Training material and the Best Practice Database produced throughout the project. The transnational joint staff training facilitated not only the professional development of the participants, but will also promoted transnational cooperation and collaborative learning of specialists in child protection beyond the lifetime of the project and beyond the borders of the participating countries.Following the transnational training the specialists in each country have organised national pilot training, using (and testing) the materials developed within the project. The training took place at various locations in Romania, Hungary, Austria and Croatia, between February-April 2016. There was a huge interest in the training in each country, so instead of participants altogether (as foreseen in the project proposal) , a number of 154 carers and foster parents (30 participants in Romania, 75 participants in Hungary, 34 participants in Croatia, 15 participants in Austria) took part in the pilots, all of them appreciating and valuing the opportunity very much. Main activities to accomplish the project objectives were: 1) Needs analysis of the target group resulting in a transnational report on training and continuing development needs of carers and foster parents - The Croatian partner (Sirius) has been coordinating the process of needs analysis and provided guidelines for doing the research work. Results of research have been collected on Wiggio group and by e-mail. The guidelines - translated and used in all countries to collect comparable data and information - included a Methodology Guideline the the following annexes: 1. Questionnaire for the individual interview addressed to foster parents, 2. Questionnaire for the individual interview addressed to carers and educators, 3. Questionnaire for the individual interview addressed to other experts, 4. Desk research template, 5. Instructions for filling templates for collecting data from individual interviews, 6. Excel chart for summarizing findings. FINDINGS of desk research and 130 interviews taken in the four countries (41 foster parents, 68 carers and 21 other experts) are summarized and extensively described in the NEEDS ANALYSIS REPORT.2) Developing a CMS based website that will host not only project information and downloadable outputs but also a best practice database: The website is avaialabe at carecomp.eu , it hosts the best practice database, general information and all intellectual outputs of the project.3) Elaboration of a Curriculum and Training Material: based on the needs analysis the partners shared the tasks of developing a Curriculum and a Training Material that meets the most urgent needs of the target group. The units of the Training materials have been elaborated in national languages then translated into English for comparison, testing and peer evaluation. Pilot testing (see above) have been successfully done in each country. The training material units have been adapted and further improved based on the feedback received during the pilot training, then the final Training material has been translated into Croatian, German, Hungarian and Romanian, illustrated and graphic edited for an attractive design and printed, presented on multiplier events and other dissemination events. All language versions are made available on the project website.

The project addresses the challenges that young people leaving residential care face and it is based on the observation and real needs (as reflected in their daily practice) in the field of youth care and residential youth care of the partner organisations. Preparation for independent life and social inclusion is also essential for unaccompanied minor migrants as they lack some important socially and culturally defined knowledge for their adaptation and inclusion to the host community. The From Youth to Independent Life project has been successfully implemented, it has made important achievements, has led to improved practices in youth work by developing three intellectual outputs. This partnership tried to keep the project plan in order to respect the proposed aims and objectives, just with some minor delays as compared to project timeline, but every task has been finished by the end of implementation period.Even though IO1 didn’t get finance, the partners considered that is important to have relevant information about the needs of target group, this activity have been carried out, but the research couldn’t be done in the extent which was proposed initially.Activities performed:IO1. Gateways to integration – Report on the resources for social inclusion of youth in residential carePreparation of study instruments: development of the interview guidelines for the guided interview for young adults, and after care providers. Revision of interview guidelines and translation into the partner countries languages. Study Implementation: implementation of the interviews with 20 young adults, in total, who already had left care and 13 after care provider. Evaluation of results: Partners agreed that in general all partner countries presented similar difficulties of the young people leaving care. There is lack of support in self-esteem and self-awareness, presenting difficulties in managing finding and maintaining job, or housing conditions. In the 1st Intellectual Output it was important to access specific information for development of successful and valid training material. The investigation was used to get to know realities of those who leaved the care-system in order to widen the aftercare - preparation program and provide the young persons what they need. Based on the interviews from partner countries most relevant topics to work with were self-esteem and self-awareness and vocational guidance before leaving care. As well as on the professional awareness as young persons have difficulties in finding the right career path that is in concordance with the interests and competences.IO2: 2. Make a living – Online games for young people to get prepared for independent life was led by P2, SEC (RO). All thepartners contributed to the selection of the competencies. The software for the online platform has been developed, which is in fact a PHP based educational online multi-game system. Taking into consideration the learning outcomes, some activities are better suited for online activities, the division of skill-groups was adapted to the online games. The online games contains in total 5 units, 25 lessons and 2 games/unit.The theory part of the lessons can be read at anytime, but the games already solved successfully, can’t be playedagain.Learning time: 30-40 learning hours.It consist of 5 units:1. Self-care skills – family planning,2. money management,3. food management skills,4. housing and housekeeping,5. career and job related skills.Units structure: Intro, Definition, References, Theory, Videos, Photos.Games: True or False, General Knowledge, Quiz, Letter Pile, Choose the right answer.The game can be played in all partner country languages. Also, a Multilingual guide has been developed in all partner languages, and also a Validation Report as well. IO3. Social workout The training material is focusing on skills listed in the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, with practical tools addressed to young people and residential youth care workers, incorporating the use of the online games. The training programme consists of 5 modules (Interpersonal skills, Legal skills (active citizenship 1), Career and job related skills, Money management, Knowledge on active citizenship 2, it is designed in modular format, each of the modules can be used separately, and it has 180 pages. The training curriculum was jointly developed by the partners, 14 of them took part of the joint staff training, and after that they piloted locally with 120 participants. Beside the developed intellectual outputs, it is important to acknowledge the multisectorial nature of the project that facilitated opportunities to cooperation of relevant stakeholders from different backrounds: public sector, NGOs, youth organisations, schools, local governments. etc. The partnership had the opportunity to improve their competences in youth work and so they can directly exploit the project results to their target groups.

"Acceptance for cultural diversity - remembering, developing, testingAgainst the background of the current movement of refugees into the countries of the European community, the project pursues the question of how adult education can contribute to promoting the acceptance of cultural diversity in these countries. Didactic concepts and methods were exchanged and tested in a consortium of five partner organizations from Germany, Poland, Austria and Romania. The project proceeded from the assumption that a historical-biographical approach to adult education, as well as learning in a social environment, are particularly suitable for promoting attitude change. In addition it took up adult education's required critical examination of its own offerings regarding cultural ascription and ""unconscious biases"". The goal of the project was to become acquainted with concepts and methods of participative work in the social environment, memory work, and anti-discrimination work in an exchange with partner organizations. The innovative aspect of the project was the attempt to link the methods and the systematic reflection under the perspective of ""promoting the acceptance of diversity,"" and the identification of ""conditions for success"". Four elements were decisive in the project's process: the learning groups of the partner organizations (4 - 10 persons), three European workshops, a semi-public blog for the exchange of evaluations of the learning groups, and the transnational meetings of the project team. In the course of the project three conceptually related learning activities (workshops) were conducted in the Offenbach district in the Frankfurt/Main region, in Vienna, and Warsaw; these took up the aspects of ""participation"", ""memory work"" and ""anti-discrimination work"". The methodology of the workshops followed the principles of subject and experience orientation. The learning groups sent 3 - 7 members to each workshop. There were also day guests. In the workshops the participants presented their own work experiences and concepts, they tested methods of biographical work and anti-discrimination work. At the end of the project it could be determined (in the evaluation) that the participants had enhanced their capacity for action related to the attention to diversity (in school and community), and become sensitized for discriminatory practices. In excursions and discussions they became acquainted with the participative approach to the admission of refugees, and could discuss its conditions and risks. The ""opening"" effect of biographical work has been confirmed, but also the special conditions in a multicultural group became clear.Experience-based learning also pointed out the borders of their own acceptance. Thereby both their own personal prejudices as well as their attitudes could be articulated and brought to reflection. Within the framework of the project we were successful in recognizing various levels of acceptance and in conducting open-result discussions.The results of the project with respect to the identification of ""conditions for success"" have been published in a documentation for further dissemination as ""Recommendations"". The project reached approximately 80 persons working as teachers, counsellors and trainers in adult education, anti-discrimination work, refugee work and staff development of teachers and social pedagogues. Another 120 people involved in the issue as experts, citizens' groups and stakeholders were involved.Feedbacks to the Project:""As a whole, the experiences from the workshop are important in order to be better able to estimate the contexts and conditions of one's own work. In fact the objective European exchange and the cross-linking is the greatest gain for us. The experiences from the workshop will become part of our continuing work. “ ""My participation in the workshop has increased my consciousness and my knowledge of the situation of foreigners in Poland enormously. I use this knowledge in discussions with students in the Department for Pedagogy and Psychology at the university in Białystok."""