Cooperation for better future for Roma youth

<< Background >>The project was designed to address two major social problems: the high drop-out rate of disadvantaged young people and the skills gap that hinders their entry into the labour market. The partner organisations identified similar challenges in their local communities: high drop-out rates, often driven by lack of motivation, learning failure and social disadvantage; lack of employability skills such as self-awareness, communication, problem-solving and cooperation - which schools often lack the space and opportunity to develop. An important challenge is the under-use of non-formal education methods, which offer an effective learning alternative for the hardest-to-reach young people; young people's vision, self-confidence and life goals are often lacking. The project has responded to these problems by aiming to provide methodological support to youth workers, to expand non-formal learning opportunities and to implement a comprehensive development programme that contributes to the prevention of early school leaving and to the successful entry of young people into the labour market.<< Objectives >>Our main objective is to strengthen the skills of youth workers working with Roma youth, to increase the capacity of partner organisations and to develop innovative methods to promote career guidance for marginalised young people, to strengthen their motivation, perseverance and soft skills (e.g. teamwork, cooperation, communication, critical thinking) for better employability. The project will also contribute to a better quality of youth work through wider dissemination. An important part of the project is the international exchange of experiences and dissemination of good practices: cooperation between partner countries has provided an opportunity to share and further develop good practices that can be applied later by other communities in their own context. The project as a whole aimed to promote young people's success in school and start in life, while contributing to reducing social exclusion and unemployment at European level.<< Implementation >>During the project, work was carried out on several levels, in parallel developing professional content and implementing activities directly targeting the target group. International partner meetings were organised: the consortium members met twice in person - first in Belgrade and then in Budapest - where, in addition to the host organisation's own good practices, other NGOs working in the region presented their work.Then came the in-house training sessions: workshops were held for volunteers, where the organisations taught the use of the collected good practices to youth volunteers.Then came the implementation of the good practices into the methodology of the organisations: both organisations designed and delivered a series of sessions for young people using the newly learned good practices. We then developed the Handbook, a practice-oriented methodological toolkit containing session ideas and good practices. At dissemination conferences (one in Belgrade and one in Budapest) we reported to professional organisations and students on the results of the project and provided them with an interactive opportunity to learn the good practices discussed in the Handbook.<< Results >>The outputs of the project are presented according to the application activities. The outcome of the project management is that the planned meetings were well prepared and well documented. The project kick-off meeting clarified the cooperation framework of the consortium. At the final meeting, the project was evaluated. All activities and results were accurately documented. The 10 good practices were collected in written form. During the train the trainer training, 10 youth workers per organisation have developed their competences and learned new good practices. During the pilot, 10 disadvantaged young people per organisation participated in a year-long development process.Participating youths' soft skills (e.g. non-violent communication, cooperation, self-awareness, critical thinking) improved, measured using Youthpass.Youth workers' community-building skills improved to provide a supportive community for the participating young people. Changes in young people's attitudes towards careers and school choices were measured during and at the end of the project using self-assessment questionnaires. During dissemination, a video and a handbook were produced.2 dissemination workshops were also held and 30 social media post were produced