<< Background >>In the last two years, the main priority of governments around the world has been to deal with the health and economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the outbreak also had a deep impact on social and community life by isolating people from each other for a long time. This unprecedented situation has even more hit those who were already more vulnerable, especially youth. This is why the ReCAP project aims to support the active involvement and civic participation of youth, through non-formal learning activities, with a special emphasis on young people with fewer opportunities, such as girls, NEETs, people with a migrant background, minorities, youths from the LGBTIAQ+ community. With the pandemic, these people have been further marginalized from the socialization places. It is, therefore, necessary to recreate the social fabric by allowing these young people to express their feelings and challenges in the public space. In the framework of the project, partners will conduct an in-depth analysis of the needs of disadvantaged youth to participate end be involved in their community life following the pandemic, which will give them a better understanding of the current social context of vulnerable young people. With this project, partners and stakeholders will also be able to be supported in their work to mentor, encourage and assist young people. Partners will have new practical tools and resources to provide to youth workers and young people and they will get access to a wider network of stakeholders working with vulnerable youth and using art-based teaching approaches.<< Objectives >>The final scope of the project is to PROMOTE THE SOCIAL INCLUSION AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT OF YOUTH (14 - 29) THROUGH THE USE OF SPECIFIC ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL TOOLS. It aims in particular to support the social inclusion of youths with different types of disadvantages, such as cultural, social, economic disadvantages, migrants, NEETS, with specific attention to girls, across all these categories. The pandemic hit hard on a global scale, provoking social isolation in particular for young people, whose personal growth builds on social relations. When it comes to disadvantaged groups of youths, these troubles have been exacerbated by the pandemic. To pursue this final outcome, the project intends to achieve multiple results:IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF YOUTH WORK. All the partners have a consolidated experience in youth work. Some of them relate specifically to vulnerable categories of youths. This project intends to give them specific tools belonging to the universe of art and culture, to improve the efficacy of their work. Art and culture are powerful ways to make feelings emerge and to unleash positive creativity. This is very well known. However, art and cultural tools can be accurately designed to respond to specific social needs. In this specific case, we want to customize the creative tools to respond to the specific troubles and challenges that the pandemic created or worsened and get the youth workers ready to cope with this new post -COVID situation, that redesigned our social relations, changed the way we stay together and created a burden of loneliness, namely for the most vulnerable categories, which require careful work to be overcome. ENGAGE, CONNECT AND EMPOWER YOUNG PEOPLE. The youth workers, duly trained, are expected to design a specific local path with and for the selected youths, based on the specific needs that emerged in the preliminary needs analysis, that will be done at the inception of the project. To do so, the youth workers are expected to select the most appropriate artistic and cultural tools explored in the training, adjust them to the specific context, and guide their youths along a path of self-awareness that should end up with the creation of artistic works. Youths will be accompanied to express through art their social and individual traumas linked to the pandemic, their needs for inclusion and sharing. This work will combine individual sessions and collective moments of sharing. By using their creativity, youths will be enabled to make emerging feelings that sometimes are difficult to express. They will speak out through their creativity and this will allow them to improve awareness about themselves and about the other youths involved in the path, creating powerful connections and empathy. This exercise will also be cathartic, as it will allow to unlock emotions and empower the youths about their capacity to handle difficult experiences and let them out, therefore teaching them how to master hard situations and have control over their life.<< Implementation >>The project will foresee a set of interlinked activities to pursue its objectives and results. The activity of PROJECT COORDINATION AND MANAGEMENT will run for the 24 months of the project and will ensure the smooth implementation of the action, the effective coordination within the partnership and the impactful communication and dissemination of the project’s objectives and results at local, national and european level. This action will be coordinated by ALDA, as lead applicant. LOCAL CONTEXT AND NEEDS ANALYSIS (M 2 - 6) This analysis will investigate the social problems that the pandemic caused or worsened, among the youths and will help tailoring the following phases of the project (the local paths) to the specific local contexts. Under the coordination of SSF, the partners co-design the questionnaire. It shall be sufficiently standardized to be easily employed by whatever organization in other Countries or territories. It will be validated in the frame of TPM n. 2, online and coordinated by SSF.Once collected the questionnaire, each partner will be responsible for elaborating an aggregated analysis. All the analysis will be collected and an aggregated report, resuming the key common points of the different situations, will be ultimately developed by SSF and shared at the occasion of the TPM n. 3, that will be hosted by SSF.ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL TOOLBOX FOR YOUTH WORKERS AND TRAINING OF TRAINERS (M6 - 11)Based on the results of the inception analysis all the partners will be responsible for the co - design of the toolbox for youth workers. Each partner will contribute by bringing in its specific expertise in the field. The consortium will validate the toolbox at the occasion of the TPM4 (online), organized by La Piccionaia. The contents of the toolbox (videos, exercises with instructions, etc.) will be drafted by the partners having contributed to their production.La Piccionaia will be responsible for hosting and organizing the ToT in Vicenza. The ToT will employ a peer learning methodology. The partners having the expertise in specific art and culture techniques (i.e. ALDA, CESIE, La Piccionaia itself) will lead different sessions for the benefit of all the youth workers. LOCAL PATH FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION THROUGH CREATIVITY (M13 - 20)Each partner will be in charge of the organization of these paths, through their previously selected and trained youth workers. This includes also the preparation of the youths (cft. section “Participants”) and the follow up of the action (local multiplier events). Each partner will present a plan for the implementation of the local path, including the identified art and cultural techniques to be employed. All the partners will organize a local multiplier event in their city or town.Each of them will have to draft the “roadmap for youth social inclusion through art and culture in a post pandemic context”. CESIE will be responsible for collecting the different documents and develop an aggregated e - publication with key common recommendations for dealing with social inclusion for vulnerable youths through art and culture in a post - pandemic context.<< Results >>We are aware of the big problem that covid has caused in our lives and in particular to those vulnerable young people, who are at a disadvantage in society, whether economically, socially or culturally and in particular girls. In order to alleviate these disadvantages, the project aims to put in place a number of tools to achieve a variety of results. Firstly, we believe that it is important to improve the quality of work with young people and for this, we intend to give greater effectiveness to the work of these young people through art and culture, as there are no better means than these to give free rein to their creativity. These specific tools will enable these young people to meet the challenges they face in the aftermath of the pandemic. Secondly, we want to engage, connect and empower young people, and for this we count on youth workers to develop together with them the most useful and appropriate tools to design a local path for these young people and guide them on their new path. And we want to continue to count on art and culture, so that these youth workers can explore and bring out the creativity and the deepest needs of each young person to allow them to express their feelings and empower them to demonstrate their ability to handle all kinds of situations and to have control over their lives. As for the concrete results, we intend to carry out a questionnaire analyzing the local context and the specific needs of young people at the local level. We also want to design an arts and culture toolkit that will help youth workers to overcome situations like the one experienced during and after the pandemic. And finally, we want to design several local roadmaps to achieve social inclusion of young people through arts and culture in a post-pandemic context.The project will consist of three tangible project results:LOCAL CONTEXT AND NEEDS ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE. It will be aimed at collecting the specific needs of youths of each local context. It will be co - designed by the partners in a way to be sufficiently standardized to be employed by other youth organizations in other contexts or Countries. ART AND CULTURE TOOLBOX FOR YOUTH WORKERS. The partners will co-design the toolbox, using internal or external expertise, and adjust these tools to a post-traumatic (i.e. the pandemic) situation. The toolbox will be then tested during the training of youth workers and finally employed in the local paths. LOCAL ROADMAPS FOR YOUTH SOCIAL INCLUSION THROUGH ART AND CULTURE IN A POST-PANDEMIC CONTEXT. Following the conclusion of the local paths, each partner, together with their youths, will assess their efficacy and draft some recommendations on how these tools can be employed in a post-pandemic situation elsewhere (multiplier effect).

According to Eurostat, 54% of all tertiary students in the EU are women, but paradoxically the percentage of women holding a decision-making position is significantly lower: only 37% of the Members of the European Parliament are women, 6.3% of CEO positions in major publicly listed companies in the EU are women. In this regard, Young Women Leaders targets a number of problem areas defined in the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025, envisaging actions aimed to promote civic engagement and foster leadership skills among young women coming from different socio-economic and cultural background. It will do so by offering the opportunity to take ownership in replicating capacity building methodology and up-skill their entrepreneurial, digital and leadership skills and stimulating them to regularly exercise civic engagement.In particular, the main aim of Young Women Leaders is to promote a new vision of women in 4 EU countries (Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden) by building the capacities of up to 60 young women, supporting them in developing pilot and raising-awareness initiatives addressing their peers and citizens, and in designing the first EU Young Women Network. The project will promote the concept of parity in all fields of society and especially in politics, economy and in decision-making, joining together three main aspects: education in the form of capacity building, raising-awareness about leadership and more gender balanced society, and network building and development. All project’s activities, results and outputs are linked to these aspects and support its rationale based on the development of a cooperation and coalition building model designed and tested by EU labs based in 4 countries and characterized by a strong interaction between young women, as drivers of the process, and NGOs, CSOs, local authorities and citizens as followers and multipliers.Main activities and results of the project include: 1. 4 needs assessment reports (1 country) based on the analysis of at least 25 interviews (5 per partner), 8 focus groups with at least 80 people (2 with at least 10 people per country), and 200 answers to the online survey2. A Capacity Building program involving up to 60 young women aged 18-30 (10-15 per country) as trainees. The program will deliver at least 50 hours of training per country. 3. Organisation of one International Academy. 4. Launch of specific pilot activities in all target countries/cities, engaging with citizens and specific stakeholders through activities aimed to promote women empowerment in policies and politics and the active engagement and participation for enhancing social cohesion of communities and cities within the concept and values of EU solidarity. 5. A Project Toolkit summing up the most important YOUNG WOMEN LEADERS outputs and activities.6. The YOUNG WOMEN LEADERS Digital Platform, joining together different materials and functions and ready to be used by other adult education providers and NGOs/CSOs for replicating the project’s methodology and actions. 7. Launch of the virtual EU Young Women Network, aiming to reach at least 200 registered members and at least 16 stakeholders (CSOs/NGOs/Associations and public authorities). 8. One final international conference bringing together at least 50 participants.The project aims to achieve the following impacts:a) Local- Create a network formed by an engaged group of young women ready to up-skill their civic engagement and leadership skills, in order to combat gender inequalities in their community and beyond.- Inspire a different way to fight youth women disengagement, more focused on their active involvement, giving them an opportunity to replicate capacity building training and take ownership to improve self-confidence and more tangible skills (e.g. entrepreneurial and digital skills).b) National- Boost the growth of the new generations and of the country as a whole, by enhancing the project's cooperation model based on the collaboration between young women, trainers, stakeholders and local communities.- Find new ways to promote women engagement, starting from showcasing a local initiative and going through an assessment of how to scale this up, and having the possibility to translate this approach into policies.c) European. - With the support of partners, young women will work on creating a EU Young Women Network (currently not existing) aiming to gather together different youth women organisations based in EU countries/cities or even to develop such organisations at EU countries’ level. - Through the extensive network of the partners, the project is aimed to reach initiatives and organizations (such as the Brussels Binder, Young Feminist Europe, European Women’s Lobby, Association Femme d’Europe), with a view of joining the EU Network, looking for concrete and creative synergies with other organisations working for gender equality and women empowerment and engagement.