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Brace for Impact
Start date: Aug 1, 2014, End date: Dec 31, 2014 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The common interest from the side of the European Union as well as from the side of the project partners was to ensure the positive and long term impact of our work on the society and help young people within their personal and professional development in the present social-economical crisis. The European Union made this commitment by the integration of all the separate educational programs into a new program Erasmus+. It has shown that the integrated educational approach is necessary for the achievement of the EU 2020 aims. One of the novelties of this program is focused on the importance of measuring and planning the social impact of educational activities. As we perceived important to revise the existing methods for measuring and planning social impact within our activities and the activities of our partners, we addressed this topic to the seminar named Brace for Impact. All the partner organizations, which were engaged in the project, work according to the educational method of Saint John Bosco and are member organizations of Don Bosco Youth-Net (DBYN), which networks these youth organizations from Europe. The fundamental aspect of this educational method is to get closer to youth in this time period, do a comprehensive work with young people, mainly with those who do not have enough opportunities. Partners who joined the project are devoted within their local activities to young people who face several problems such as unemployment, young people from the refugee families, migrants, those who are in special care, etc. By the youth exchanges, voluntary services and various educational programs are these organizations, also due to the EU2020 impulse, focused on the creation of the European opportunities for NEETs. In addition to the activities which these partner organizations implement on the local, national or international level, they are aware of the lack of space and possibilities which they devote to planning and measuring of the social impact. Based on this fact, solving the necessity for planning and measuring the social impact of project was established as the project aim, from which a better responding to the needs of the target groups to which they are devoted is derived. During the seminar named ?Brace for Impact? we trained the youth workers (employees and volunteers) from eleven partner- organizations from Europe. Organizations from these countries were included: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, England and Spain. The single organizations were entrusted with the selection of the participants. 26 people, 13 women and 13 men took part in this seminar. The seminar elucidated and offered new methods and procedures in the field of planning and measuring the social impact as well as the increase of the knowledge about the Erasmus+ program. Part of the program was also finding which European and national instruments for the recognition of non-formal education might use be as a support for the target groups in their projects. Through the project, which was supported by the program Erasmus+, the participants had an opportunity to reflect their current situation in their organization and also reflect on the specific options how to focus more on the measurement of the social impact of the educational activities in future and increase the effectiveness of their current activities. Through the creation of a dissemination plan after several points of the program, the participants had an opportunity to reflect the gained information and think about their delivery and implementation into practice. Moreover, thanks to the common examination they brought forward different aspects used to increase the planning and measuring educational impact of the future projects within Erasmus+ program.
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