Sustainable Youth Work: from volunteers to entrepreneurs.

Sustainable Youth Work has been an ambitious project, born from the relationships and enthusiasm of CultNet, a previous E+ project developed by some of the partners involved in SYW.The partnership is led by Associazione Glocal Factory (IT) expert in non-formal learning and in projects. It is composed by:•youth sport association USMA (IT), •youth association CZ-Art (PL),•music company Marmaduke (SP),•youth association EmpServe (KE),•ICT company ISpace (GH).The project aims at expanding and improving the learning path and international network of youth workers which are its heritage and to improve their skills in engaging young people in the local community. In details, the learning path has been improved by:-to enlarge and improve the MOOC already developed by CultNet through a new chapter about sustainability (https://yedu.eu/signup);-the development of a Web APP for virtual exchange and international teams (https://app.yedu.eu/login);-the development of a Wiki Area for the share of knowledge and expertise (http://wiki.yedu.eu/).The international network has been enlarged by:-international mobility of youth workers through study visits, trainships and final seminar-national and international dissemination events-virtual international teams on the YEDU App.YEDU (=Youth Education) is the acronym we selected to include both the projects: CultNet and SYW. (https://yedu.eu/) Culture was the focus of CultNet, sport and business are which of SYW. Partners experts in all these sectors (culture, sports, business and youth work) have been selected in the phase of design. Meeting and exchange among different “worlds”, such as volunteering and business, Europe and Africa, culture, sports and ICT has consequently been the core of the project.The equal exchange between African and EU partners, involving both youth association and company from one as from the other, and between volunteers and business world, has been another of the main focus of the project. The last important point is the network built with official institutions, companies and associations not directly involved in the project for the recognition and implementation of its Learning Path. This has been guaranteed by the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding between each partner and one of the stakeholders mentioned above.In the end, Sustainable Youth Work is part of a process of growing of ideas and relationships among people, and this feature characterized its development. The health emergency caused by the pandemic of Covid-19 has put the consortium to the test and has created some difficulties for the implementation of the project, that was in the last months of implementation in March 2020, with last important mobility activities and exchanges missing – which in Ghana of 2 EU YWs, in Spain of 2 African YWs and the final seminar. The consortium asked for a suspension and then an extension in order to keep these important last steps. They couldn’t always be implemented successfully – mobility in Spain didn’t take place and part of the mobility in Ghana was implemented online. But this difficult situation and the solvable and unsolvable problems, the clashes, the pacifications, the difficulties that each one, differently and specifically, has faced, gave a strong contribution to the strengthen of the partnership and of the network involved directly or indirectly in the project, and in this way to the achievement of SYW’s objectives, its sustainability and future developments.