European mobility programs have played an important role in the transformation of young people who have participated in them. Over time, these programs have become more flexible, with newly implemented measures to allow young people with fewer opportunities to participate and also take advantage of the experience. However, these young people need more preparation to overcome difficulties and frustrations, as well as a more step-by-step process of participating in these programs. The GAIN project aims to offer this gradual engagement through a training process that gives youth the opportunity to learn about the different program possibilities while they are empowered with a basic set of skills to be able to participate successfully. In turn, it aims to offer these young people international experiences that allow them to transform themselves and to overcome the difficulties of their social situation. Finally, it aims to offer the possibility of devising, planning and implementing a group entrepreneurship initiative as well as identifying and collecting all the learning of this process.The planned activities are related to this preparation of young people with fewer opportunities, including a training period (A5), an international training experience in a group (C1), an international or national individual experience (A6 and A8) and the possibility of carrying out a group entrepreneurship project through the CES program (A7 and A11). These young people, together with the tangible results of the project, will be the main element of dissemination of the process so that other entities and young people can replicate them and take advantage of the experience.This project not only aims to act with the young participants, but also to empower the partner organizations (and non-formal partners) by facilitating access to resources and tools, to strengthen the GAIN network that aims to connect motivated entities for the development of projects with young people with less opportunities and, above all, to detect the good practices of the project, ensuring strong results and disseminating them for their exploitation.The activities will always be carried out based on non-formal education methodologies so that the impact on young people is greater and more adequate. The involvement of young people in the different phases of the project as an element of learning and entrepreneurship will also be strengthened. In this sense, the youth themselves will be of great importance during the design of the training process, as well as in the training activity and, of course, in the choice of the individual mobilities and the idea of ​​the solidary project.The GAIN project is a joint initiative with entities from Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Portugal, Poland and Spain with a wide spectrum of areas of activity, but with experiences in mobility projects, work with young people with fewer opportunities and experience in inclusion. That is why entities from different territorial areas have been chosen who can provide a different view of the realities of these young people at European level.Some of the promoting entities have previously participated in another Strategic Partnerships project that has promoted the training of entities, the creation of tools to offer a preparation of adequate mobility projects to young people with fewer opportunities as well as the creation of a network (GAIN Network) that aims to facilitate the identification of entities with motivation to participate or promote inclusion projects within Erasmus + and CES. The current project aims to use these tools created to strengthen them, disseminate them and initiate direct action with young people.The project will consist, not only with the existing partners, but of other non-formal partners who will share and participate indirectly but actively in the project. These entities will be part of a dissemination plan that aims not only to transfer the results to other organizations, to motivate new ones, to empower entities that work with the inclusion of young people, but also to raise awareness among National Agencies and decision-makers of European programs on the needs of young people with fewer opportunities. It is for them that we believe that the GAIN project has a significant potential impact, either by the young people themselves and entities that will participate directly or by the expected results that can help multiply the impact at the local, regional and European level.

Youth unemployment is one of today’s challenges facing the European continent. In wider Europe, the picture of youth unemployment is very diverse and the issue is not only limited to the concerns of national authorities, but also is dominantly present in European discourses vis-à-vis European institutions as well as youth associations and organisations. In the countries of former socialist block, the employability of young people has been influenced severely by a rather rapid shift of the structure of economy from socialist system to capitalism, very often leaving the young people unaware of how to transfer from the large-scale, highly industrial jobs to small scale, and often self-managed jobs in service sector or small scale production based on the assets of own community.Therefore, the consortium wishes to address the economic shift in transformative democracies through boosting creativity and entrepreneurship thinking among young people, enabling them to become an economically active part of the local communities, which is possible to facilitate youth work and non-formal learning as instruments to develop the creative and innovative potential as well as entrepreneurial skills of young people. As a window of opportunity for engaging young people in entrepreneurial activity at the same time activity contributing to the development of own communities and building up on the strength and interests of young people the consortium composed of partners from Armenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia and Ukraine sees the engagement of young people tourism sector, as one of the most rapidly development fields of economy in the countries of project partners. We acknowledge that having limited natural resources, developing human capital and infrastructure for tourism can be an effective instrument for sustainable development for these countries.The aim of “Cities of YOUth: increasing the role of young people in the development of tourism infrastructure” project is to enhance the role and involvement of young people in the build-up of their communities through actively engaging them in the development of tourism infrastructures.To achieve the aim we have identified two specific objectives: • To strengthen the capacity of youth workers in order to support young people to increase their entrepreneurial role and active community engagement through a trainingcourse, modules for coaching, a study visit.• To develop competences and self-esteem of young people to become active stakeholders in the economic development of their communities through 2 exchanges for 50 young people, long-term coaching, business consultancy and implementing business ideas. In the scope of the proposed project we would like to tackle two main aspects of tourism:1. Hospitality service (engaging young people and their households in hosting tourists and visitors) and2. Tour-guiding (creating youth-friendly routs for on foot and by bike trails, organizing tours and developing maps)

"After gaining independence Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have started developing open society and building a democratic state. Since democratic society implies basic principles such as pluralism and prohibition of discrimination, struggle for equality and human rights have been brought to a public discourse. Throughout the last decade we have witnessed an increasing trend of polarization in Caucasus and Europe. Higher incidences of violent extremism hate crime and hostility towards different groups especially manifested through hate speech are becoming worryingly frequent in everyday lives. Several reports pointed the rise of violent extremism (Amnesty International ¨Annual Report 2016-2017”, Human Rights Watch ¨World Report 2017¨). In 2010s multiple international and civil society organisations have reported higher incidences of anti-western propaganda, which attacks the liberal values that underpin human rights. The strongest anti-western narratives try to convince the audiences that the Western World is imposing policies and values incompatible with the national traditions and values. Through this approach, especially the rights of LGBTQI community are being under a constant attack, together with efforts for promoting gender equality, rights of ethnic and religious minorities and the creators of these narratives systematically incite hatred and encourage nationalism, prejudices and discrimination, and also undermine other fundamental human rights. Due to the unconsolidated media environment of Caucasus, these dangerous messages spread among wide public and combating them requires not only constantly debunking specific cases of disinformation and fake news, but mainly systematic education of the population. Freedom House report ""Nations in Transit 2017"" has alarming findings regarding central and eastern Europe – more than a half of the countries in the report have declined in their Democracy Scores. With its second focal point, this project identifies human rights education and education for democratic citizenship (EDC/HRE) as one of the key tools to develop critical consciousness and empower society against propaganda. “Human rights education - helps to develop the communication skills and informed critical thinking essential to a democracy. It examines human rights issues without bias and from diverse perspectives through a variety of educational practices” (Human Rights Here and Now: Celebrating the UDHR, ed. Nancy Flowers (Minneapolis: Human Rights Educators’ Network, Amnesty International USA, 1998). The project used Council of Europe materials (Bookmarks, We CAN!) to create a know-how on taking action against violent extremism, hate speech, anti-western propaganda through human rights education, education for democratic citizenship, media education and literacy and counter and alternative narratives.Project aimed to develop media literacy and critical consciousness of youth in Caucasus through advocating EDC/HRE and confront narratives discrediting the concept of liberal democracy, rule of law, human rights;Objectives:To train the fellows in EDC/HRE and media education;To create educational opportunities for young people in EDC/HRE and increase their participation in civil society;To create the practice of using counter and alternative narratives with young people to discredit propaganda and hate speech;To make Council of Europe educational tools more accessible and disseminate it with civil society organizations;To create practices of counter and alternative narratives against propaganda and hate speech and disseminate it in international and regional civil society organisations;To promote and advocate for EDC/HRE European Charter and to create cross-sector and multi-level cooperation opportunitie"

“Upgrade” is a project that will deepen partnerships between youth centres/youth NGOs from Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, Estonia and Sweden. The project will increase the operational capacity and participatory approaches of Youth centers in partner countries by creating youth work structures, developing professional competences and establishing/exchanging means of best practice, particularly in UA/GE where there is an imminent need to create and implement effective youth centre structures. “Upgrade” is a long-term project whose activities will be distributed and held in the various partner countries. The project includes a total of 8 learning mobility activities and 3 sets of long-term capacity building activities, using non-formal and learning-by-doing approaches. The activities will involve creating youth work methods, building competencies, developing and implementing structures, and reflecting and amending piloted ideas. The project structure is as follows: • Kick-off Meeting to confirm project aims and partner responsibilities • Training Course to develop a common understanding on what youth work is and how to develop the role of youth workers • Preparing Fellows (Youth Workers) from UA/GE for job-shadowing Fellowships• Fellowship which will expose UA/GE Fellows to the best practices of youth centre management within Estonia, Sweden and Poland• Meetings between youth centres and organizations on how to adopt and adapt best practices learnt during Fellowship (x4)• Training Course on how to use non-formal learning methods• 3-month phase (including a mid-term evaluation) that will implement agreed practices and strategies in practice• Youth Exchange to give youth workers the opportunity to act as group leaders and motivate youths (x2)• Seminar discussing 3-month phase and Youth Exchanges• Large-Scale event disseminating acquired knowledge to Youth Work stakeholders • Evaluation meeting confirming best methods which will be distributed to further partners in the youth work fieldThe project consortium has discussed and developed a set of evaluation and assessment procedures to measure the outcomes of the project ranging from daily reflection at each mobility, personal evaluation forms at the end of each mobility, written analysis report by the trainers/experts/coordinators of each mobility, feedback forms from young people, feedback forms of large scale events and assessment interviews with youth workers from Ukraine and Georgia. During the project, 29 youth workers will be involved in each mobility and 240 youths will be involved in local activities. The project will also target 100 stakeholders at the Large-Scale Event. At the end of the project, a handbooks will be distributed to youth work stakeholders with materials being accessible online so other organizations can implement the best practices adopted from the project, ensuring the project has a sustainable element.

<< Background >>Climate change, ecology and pollution are global issues. The EU is reacting with the “European Green Deal'' which aims to achieve climate-neutrality until 2050. In the first place political and economical measures are the key to achieve the mentioned benefits of this deal (fresh air, clean water, healthy soil and biodiversity; building renovated, energy efficient buildings; more public transport; cleaner energy; longer lasting products that can be repaired, recycled and re-used;etc.). However, the Green Deal also stresses the crucial role that education plays in reaching the goal of becoming climate neutral. Hence, it is not surprising that Environment and Climate Change is one of the priorities of the Erasmus+ Programme: “The Programme will therefore be a key instrument for the building of knowledge, skills and attitudes on climate change and sustainable development both within the European Union and beyond.” (E+ Programme Guide 2021, p. 9). The consortium is convinced that we as actors of non-formal youth work have the responsibility and ability to contribute to raising awareness and making a change on local as well as international level. Putting energy transition into practice, developing climate-neutral transport or shutting down coal-fired power plants don’t belong to our activities as civil society organisations. However, we can make another contribution. We identified the lack of awareness among the population as the main problem on a local level for environmentally-friendly behaviour, right in front of our doorstep.We can see waste-dumping, pollution, littering in urban and rural spaces, harmful building and mining projects, usage of plastic bags and single-use products, etc. The way the environment is treated shows too little sustainability and awareness about the importance of its protection. This has many negative effects. The cutting of trees for building real estate increases erosion and flooding; cars cause traffic jams, pollute the air and support health problems; the pollution of natural sites has a negative effect on tourism; the massive use of single-use products creates too much trash, especially plastic bags end up in rivers, lakes and the sea. Our consumption habits are speeding-up climate change, but at the same time we can make a change on individual level and support environmentally-friendly policies. We identified the lack of awareness as one big problem. The attitude towards the environment is important for all generations and concerns the whole society. We as civil society actors can play a crucial role in tackling this issue with our target group in order to achieve social change by conducting Green Youth Work. Under Green Youth Work we understand activities with a local target group that aims to a) raise awareness about environment and climate change, b) make a change with concrete actions in the local context, c) connect and involve relevant external actors, d) disseminate the activity results to reach a wider audience beyond the directly involved actors and e) to empower young people to be active members of civil society by acquiring necessary key competences.<< Objectives >>We want to implement this project with the following objectives:1.) Creating a Network of European Organisations who address climate change and establish Green Education in their youth work on local and international level2.) Capacity Building of the Partners and Exchange of best-practice in regards to methods of Green Education and environmentally-friendly practices in youth work3.) Forming 4 “Green Youth Work Hubs” in each participating country4.) Forming and training 4 national teams of youngsters “Climate Ambassadors” who will implement workshops, clean-up events, panel discussions, etc. on local level and publish the E-Magazine5.) Raising awareness on local and international level about climate change and environment6.) Publishing a monthly E-Magazine on topics related to “Environment” published online7.) Publishing a Strategy Paper on Green Youth Work8.) Involving relevant external stakeholders and creating synergies<< Implementation >>The project will start with a Kick-Off Meeting and will be attended by two representatives of each partner. It will consist of an advanced getting-to-know of the team members; introduction to the topic, discussion of the objectives; formulation and clarification of expectations and contributions; setting up the final working plan for the upcoming months, presenting each national PR and Visibility Plan; Involvement Strategy for the associated partners; confirming the selection criteria of the Climate Ambassadors and planning the selection process; setting milestones and interim targets as well as deadlines for specific project tasks; creating the Visual Identity and the Project Logo and planning the task division accordingly. At the end of the Kick-Off-Meeting all consortium members will have the same picture and vision and will know what to do in the next months. During Interphase I the national Climate Ambassador Teams will be assembled and the contacts to the associated partners and other stakeholders will be strengthened.The LTTA will serve to a) train the selected CAs during a common physical activity, b) Planning the E-Magazine that will be mainly filled and edited by the “Climate Ambassadors” (Title, Design, Working Process), c) Exchange of Best Practice: with which methods to address Environment and Ecology in Youth Work, d) starting the working process on the Strategy Paper and e) planning the local activities by the CAs in detail.During Interphase II the CAs will implement local activities according to the developed Action Plan and start to work on publishing the E-Magazine. The national coordinators will provide full support to the CAs. Besides, they will work on the Strategy Paper. The associated partners will be involved in all activities.The Multiplier Events will consist of 4 Sustainable Days in each participating country. They will have the character of a Fair and parallely at all participating organisations. It will serve as an opportunity to make the overall project visible, to present the project outcomes, to transfer the developed knowledge and skills to relevant stakeholders and to gather the associated partners. It will have the character of a Fair. It will start with a Keynote Speech of a public figure (for ex. politician, representative of the Ministry for Environment, Mayor, etc. suitable to each local context) and further contain the Presentation the Overall Project, the Partner Consortium and Erasmus+ Programme; Workshops for Kids how to upcycle, how to save water, how to create a cultivation box etc.; Presentation of the Strategy Paper; a designated Workshop for Youth Workers and Trainers/Teachers in which the topic “Green Youth Work” will be introduced alongside with concrete activities and methods that can be used by the audience with their target group; a Clothes Swapping Party and a Panel Discussion about relevant topic in the community with relevant actors (environmental activists, political decision makers, media representatives, teachers and trainers from the formal and non-formal sector, etc.). During the Evaluation Seminar the attendees will be evaluating the Interphase II (local activities by the CAs, networking and cooperating with the associated partners, creating the Strategy Paper), evaluating the national Multiplier Events (impact on local level, involvement of the associated partners and other external actors, opportunities to enlarge the network and connect the associated partners from each country to enhance synergies), planning how to maintain the E-Magazine after the end of the project lifetime, planning Follow-Up activities on a local level as well as on an international level.<< Results >>The overall project aims to achieve different outcomes.4 GREEN YOUTH WORK HUBS- each partner will establish a “Green Youth Work Hub” which will serve: a) as a source of information for those (youth workers, NGOs, schools, etc.) who are interested in new methodologies and tools for green youth work; b) coordinating and supporting the activities of the Climate Ambassadors; c) maintaining contacts and networking with relevant stakeholders; d) contributing to the project website; e) working in cooperation with the other HUBs on the STRATEGY PAPER; f) coordination with the other HUBs; g) organising the Multiplier Events.4 CLIMATE AMBASSADOR TEAMS- at each organisation a group of young people will be established: the Climate Ambassadors (CAs). These teams will implement activities on the local level that aim to raise-awareness for environmental topics and contribute to an environmentally-friendly development in the local community. These activities can be: organising workshops at the organisation, schools, youth clubs, etc.; clean-up events; film screenings; panel discussions with relevant actors, creating a community garden; establishing a self-repair workshop; etc. E-MAGAZINE - this monthly online publication will be produced by the CAs and contain topic-related articles and interviews from the local community (reports about an ecological topic; interview with activists, politicians, NGOs; articles about environmental initiatives, etc.); videos or instructions on how to up-cycle; reports about the local activities; tools for Youth Workers).ACTIVITIES ON LOCAL LEVEL- these activities will be organised and implemented by the CAs in cooperation with relevant external actors and interested young people from the community. Examples for this sort of activity were described above.4 SUSTAINABLE DAYS - these days will serve as Multiplier Events during which a) the overall project and E+ will be presented, b) the local activities and CAs will be presented, c) a workshop for youth workers, trainers and teachers will be implemented on methods for Green Green Youth Work, d) workshops on up-cycling; clothes swap parties; panel discussionPROJECT WEBSITE: the website will contain general info about the project, funding and partner consortium; tools and methods for green youth work; the e-magazine, events and activities and the latest developments of the project courseSTRATEGY PAPER: The Strategy Paper on Green Youth Work will introduce the topic to interested parties, such as NGOs, Youth Workers, Teachers, Trainers, School, Youth Clubs, City Halls and Municipalities, etc. It will present the current academic discourse and the situation in the participating countries which give an insight into different realities and situations in Europe and beyond. Besides, concrete methods for Green Youth Work will be presented that can be used for local youth work.AWARENESS-RAISING: a non-tangible outcome will be the raised awareness about the topic among youth workers, the target group, stakeholders and in society. (how to measure?)CAPACITY-BUILDING OF THE CONSORTIUM: the partners will gain valuable skills and knowledge about the topic that will empower them to implement more activities and and design new ones. All partners will benefit from the close cooperation, the fruitful exchange and future cooperation. The integration of external partners and stakeholders into the project will consolidate their position especially in the local context. Synergies will develop and increase the impact on the local level.LEARNING OUTCOME OF YOUNG PEOPLE: the young people involved will develop their Sense for Entrepreneurship, Initiative and for Civil Activism. During the local activities and the dissemination they can carry these learning outcomes also to other young people in the local context. These are valuable experiences that will accompany and empower the young people also beyond the project lifetime.