"Fashion industry is among the biggest contributors to waste on the planet. And, the society and youth are little equipped to deal with the impact of overconsumption of clothes, textiles and the like. Let us portray an everyday situation:We buy it, wear it a few times, get sick of it - or we realize it’s out of fashion and we throw it away, only to begin this cycle all over again.Unfortunately, the affordability and accessibility of fast fashion comes at a high price for the planet and especially for the people who make it. There are roughly 40 million garment workers in the world today, 85% of them women, who are some of the lowest paid workers in the world. Not to mention it’s also a major contributor to greenhouse gases, water, and air pollution, and creates problematic levels of waste. However, the problem lies not in garment. We need to change people's habits, attitude and behaviour towards clothing consumption. Sure, the world reacts to the problem, but still is not even nearly enough. That is why we want to implement ""The Circle of Fashion"" (CoF).CoF aims to take small steps towards better habits, cleaner environment & to stand up for human rights, with more specific objectives being:- to launch, test & develop a training programme about conscious behaviour towards clothing/fashion targeting youth workers & young leaders from EU & partner countries;- to equip youth workers & young leaders with knowledge, key competences & employable tools aimed at reducing the impact of fast fashion;- to foster capacity building and new social initiatives in youth work (related to the topics of conscious consumption / human rights / environment);- to increase transnational cooperation & exchange of good practices in the field between youth workers, NGOs & other stakeholders;- to disseminate the project’s ideas further to the wider public.Why these needs were selected over others:The consortium believes that it’s necessary to get serious about the “fashion problem”. It’s not as small or superficial as it might seem. In fact, it’s impact is on par with plastic overuse.The Circle of Fashion objectives and planned outputs & outcomes completely fit those of the participating organisations and of the European policies in multiple fields. Moreover, it will create synergies and long-term impact by:- improving youth work;- contributing to the well-being of youth & society in general;- raising social awareness about garments overconsumption & solutions for it;- adding to capacities of NGOs & mobility of youth in the developing countries.What is more, since the project is developed in tight cooperation with international partners, it will allow all the involved parties to learn from diverse experiences."

<< Objectives >>The main aim of the project is to increase the mental wellbeing of marginalized young people who face more discrimination and exclusion due to Covid-19 through youth work and the objectives are to increase the capacity of youth workers about combining their work with wellbeing activities through innovative approaches, to increase the participation and inclusion of marginalized young people and to develop a guideline about how to work with marginalized youth by using wellbeing activities.<< Implementation >>First activity is the management activities which are about overall project management. The second activity is the training of youth workers where we are going to train youth workers with innovative approaches of mental wellbeing, the third activity is valorization of toolkit which the youth workers will prepare the guideline, the forth activity is the local activities which the youth workers will transfer their knowledge to the marginalized young people and the fifth activity is dissemination.<< Results >>We expect to increase the mental wellbeing of marginalized youth and implicitly their inclusion and participation to the society. Besides, we expect to upscale the quality of youth work through innovative methods and introduce the importance of wellbeing in these activities. Thanks to the guideline that we will prepare, we are expecting to reach out more people who can adapt all these ideas and activities to their own practices and start working on wellbeing more.

Realizing that there is a lack of methods in youth work who could facilitate refugee integration, organisations from Sweden, Kenya, Colombia and Myanmar (refugee origin or host countries) decided to join for the project “Migration to Integration” (MI) .The main AIM of the project: to improve youth work methods on young refugees’ integration and, accordingly, help them integrate.OBJECTIVES to reach it: 1. Raise the qualifications and competencies of youth workers by developing new methods for refugee integration through youth work;2. Exchange good practices between countries on alternative ways of integrating refugees within the local communities;3. Help youth learn how to communicate with refugees and integrate them better through social activities;4. Lower xenophobia, racism and foster multilingualism of the youth;5. Spread the main idea of the project to other NGOs and the general public;6. Foster capacity building and new social initiatives in the field of youth work related to refugees;7. Increase transnational cooperation & exchange of good practices on alternative ways of refugees integration.To achieve these OBJECTIVES, a capacity building programme, targeting youth workers from EU & Partner countries, will be developed, tested & launched. It will include: (1) Analysis of situation of refugee integration in partner countries and creation of a training material for youth workers to improve it;(2) 3 training courses for youth workers on integration of young refugees through youth work;3) 1 youth exchange to test the methods created during the above mentioned training courses;(4) 4 job shadowing activities in the above mentioned countries for youth workers to gain practical knowledge of how to improve inclusion of refugees;(3) Developing open educational resources (including an online platform and e-learning course on refugee integration through youth work), which would allow youth workers to access the educational content developed in the frame of the project at any time(4) Launch of online competition for youth to develop ideas on refugee integration and raise awareness about their situation; 5) Initiative “Friends without borders” to connect young refugees with local youngsters and facilitate refugee adaptation in a new country;(6) Final local conferences to share the results with target audiences in partner countries.All in all, this will surely improve the capacity of youth workers to help integration of refugees through youth work and create further initiatives related to that.

<< Background >>The Lifeboat project is based on experiences of partner NGOs in terms of work with refugees and migrants. The idea of preparing KA2 Cooperation partnership came after discussion between partners and the whole context was as well discussed in the group. Before the first application, each partner organization has organized two focus groups with eight youngsters (16-24 y.o.) with a migration background at ZOOM. Those focus groups aimed to find out how they feel in a new country, the barriers they are facing, and their interest in participating in youth work activities. The results have shown that overall:1) The absolute majority of inquired youngsters (across all partner countries) do not feel completely integrated or accepted (especially, since they are often presented negatively in the media).2) Accordingly, 76% of participants feel not accepted by their local peers (32% of them do not have a chance to interact with them at all, while the remaining part feels excluded in the mixed group). In their words, local youngsters often tend to interact with other locals more (as it is probably easier for them due to a more similar cultural background). Some of the youngsters even mentioned that others seem to be afraid of their different (e.g. muslim) culture.3) When asked what kind of actions would facilitate their social integration in the new country, quality leisure activities (together with local community) & educational workshops were mentioned the most.4) Also, 80% of refugees would like to be invited to join the organizations & youth centres, but feel not too confident to simply appear at a youth centre or youth organization.With these results in mind, the exact idea of the Lifeboat project (which would contribute to a more equal intercultural and inclusive environment within the youth local communities and involve young refugees / immigrants through new innovative methodologies) came up. This version comes as the third one, after fine tuning of details, which were recommended by evaluators.<< Objectives >>The Main aim is to create innovative Project results for youth workers to improve their work with youngsters from migrant/refugee/asylum seeking background. Those youngsters as well as local youth will be actively involved during activities in order to hear their opinion and to create a methodology as well as manual, which will be based on real needs of those young people and which will be tested in real situations.Our objectives are to:1. Improve the level of social inclusion in the education system by methodology and manual created as a part of IO, where youngsters from migrant/refugee/asylum seeking background as well as local youth will cooperate.2. Strengthen capacities of youth workers, facilitators, teachers and other relevant workers in work with multicultural groups and to promote social inclusion between them.3. Create innovative educational materials for free use, which will help youth workers, facilitators and teachers to improve their understanding of creating tolerant working environment and their adaptation will lead to decreasing of non-tolerant, xenofobic or racist behaviour4. To bring a change to youth work focused on youth from refugee/migrant background on a national level in each partner country based on our Policy recommendation.<< Implementation >>There are six transnational meetings planned during the duration of the project, which is 22 months. The meetings will bring together two representatives of each NGO, which always means 12 youth workers, and will take place in every partner country. During the meetings, there will be various sessions connected, especially to the project's results, its monitoring, evaluation, and dissemination. Except for the transnational meetings, we will prepare several local activities. The first is connected to the project's results and will bring together youngsters with refugee/migrant backgrounds and majority youth. During these activities, we will observe the reactions to various non-formal methods and methods of learning. These youth meetings will be a core for project result II. Our participants as well as target groups are most importantly youth from migrant/refugee/asylum seeking background, who will be actively involved during the activities as well as local youth, who will attend the activities and work together with the first group. Important role plays as well as youth workers, who will attend to each activity as facilitators or observers. In total we expect to actively integrate around 100 participants with fewer opportunities plus tens of participants who do not belong to the category with fewer opportunities, those will be mostly youth workers/facilitators or teachers, who will take part in the project.Once project result II is prepared, we will manifest it to NGOs and institutions in each country and present them our Policy recommendation. In order to promote the Policy recommendation, we will meet NGOs and institutions as mentioned, and later on, we will deliver the document to the ministry of education in every country.<< Results >>There will be two Projects results created as a part of this Cooperation partnership. The first one is a methodology for youth workers called Lifeboat and teaching modules, which will be created together with youngsters from refugee/migrant/asylum seeking background as well as with local youth. Following result “How to facilitate inclusive sessions” (Manual) is deeply connected to the Methodology since based on the knowledge gained during the PR1 and after activities, which will test practicability of those methods, there will be Manual published, which will be then shared in language of each partner plus English and shared to relevant target groups. Last activity, which is not part of projects results is Lifeboat recommendation, which will be presented to ministry of education in each partner country. This recommendation will include our knowledge and present possibilities to improve the situation in the country. Target groups and institutions, who will accept our materials are expected to join this recommendation by their signature in order to express that this need is not based on one project, but there are more professionals, who see the need as well. To ensure proper dissemination and easy access for all needed information and to share our knowledge by audiovisual educational materials we will launch a website, which will include the developed content and provide free access to all materials created during our project.Long term benefits of our projects are not only partnership built between NGOs but as well all the materials, which will be presented online and will be free accessible even after the end of the project. We see as well potential for PR1 and PR2 to be used as a base for other projects on this topic, which will use our information and use them for their own research. The Policy Recommendation will as we believe open discussion in countries on national and local level.