Flex-Yards 4 Young Potentials!

<< Background >>Social exclusion concerns a large part of young people, who have less opportunity to fit into their social context in a positive way, demonstrating more difficulty in entering the world of training, work and volunteering. This phenomenon is widespread across all European countries, and concerns in particular some specific categories of young people, including young people with a migrant background and young people living in rural areas. Among our partner group we discovered that, at least, the following common weaknesses and needs should be addressed through our project:-The lack of active participation of young people from disadvantaged groups -The low quality of (professional) youth work -The lack of awareness on the added value of physical activity among target groups and stakeholders -Promoting and sharing of good practices in the field of sport and its educational aspect -The lack of cross border cooperations in the field of sports at local and European level<< Objectives >>By implementing the project we wanted to achieve the following goals: - Promote the inclusion and active participation of young people from disadvantaged groups through sport and volunteering - Improve the quality of youth work- Raise awareness on the added value of sport and physical activity - Promote and share good practices in the field of sport and its educational aspect - Activate and encourage a network and cross border cooperation in the field of sports at local and European level<< Implementation >>We have implemented the following activities:- Elaboration, evaluation and testing of a Training Format about Education Through Sport and sport for socialinclusion- International Training Course for youth professionals from all partner countries (to test the Training Format, commonly developed earlier)- Local volunteering program in each partner country based on sporting activities, where young people got the opportunity to develop their skills and talents at service of their communities<< Results >>The outputs and results that we wanted to achieve were the following:- 12 youth workers/professionals (3 per partner country) have followed the Transnational Training Course- Approx. 20 young people per country are matched with youth work or activities and/or are weekly active in organizing activities - 10% of these young people (from 20) per country have been offered a job in the field of youth and/or sport- Each project partner has found commitment with at least 2 local stakeholders on staying actively involved after the duration of the project - 1 Training Format about Education Through Sport in youth work is realized and shared