Youth workers for minority youth inclusion

Project context:

Social, political and economic exclusion remains an everyday challenge and reality to millions of minority members living in Europe who compared to majority population are often disadvantaged in the labour market, have unequal access to social services and health care and face discrimination and violation of their human rights. This leads to marginalisation, ghettoization, unemployment, divisions in societies, lack of adequate literacy skills, addiction problems, violence, lacking access to citizen’s rights and responsibilities as well as lack of participation in community and democratic life. More worrying is the fact that in 2013, 24.4% of EU population were at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

The TC will offer new non-formal learning tools for inclusion of minority youth in society that will promote and raise awareness about social cohesion, tolerance, diversity, solidarity, intercultural and interfaith dialogue while in the same can be used for fighting against discrimination, racism, xenophobia and exclusion in general in any form and at any level.

In order to achieve this, the project has the following objectives:
– To increase participants knowledge about minorities, minorities rights in particular and human rights in general, challenges and violation of rights minorities face, minority-majority relations, intercultural and interfaith dialogue and different models of social inclusion of minorities in EU;
– To raise the awareness about how certain minorities, groups of individuals are socially excluded on the basis of their status, life choices or beliefs and encourage participants to take an active stand against discrimination, racism, xenophobia and social exclusion;
– To foster social cohesion and inclusion in Europe through addressing the issue of social exclusion and encouraging youth awareness and commitment to tackling these issues through creating and running local youth activities;
– To empower youth workers and organisations in developing quality projects or activities that involve or benefit minority young people and promote social inclusion on all levels (from the local to the European level);
– To develop non-formal educational tools and methodology for minority youth inclusion in particular and youth work with minority youth in general;
– To improve the intercultural and social skills of youth workers and young people as well as their competences to manage and work with diversity in all its forms;
– To foster sustainable international cooperation and networks, capacity and partnership building in the youth field working with minorities and social inclusion;
– To promote Erasmus+ Programme as tool and platform to work with minority youth and reach and enable active participation of excluded groups of young people.

Profile of participants: Each partner organization will be represented by 3 people (except for Macedonia and Italy that delegate 4 participants each).

Candidates must fulfil the following requirements:
– 18+ years old;
– active in local associations, community organisations and/or minority youth
– organisations;
– active in local, regional or national associations and interested in developing strategies and projects for social inclusion and respect for cultural diversity;
– open to new experiences and cultures;
– be interested in the topic;
– have a good conduct in English;
– be able to attend the entire programme;
– be committed to disseminate the results of the project as widely as possible
– be committed to multiply the results of the project in the local communities;