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Spectrum, a synergy venture to combat youth unemployment
Start date: Aug 1, 2014, End date: Aug 1, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

"Spectrum - A Synergy venture to combat youth unemployment" is a 2 years project aiming to improve the quality of the youth exchanges done throughout Europe, while having a major focus in youth employability. It will have 4 main activities - 1 Training Course (November 2014), 2 Youth Exchanges (January and July 2015), 1 Follow-Up activity (February 2016) - taking place in Ommen, the Netherlands, between August 2014 and August 2016. They will involve 27 youth workers, and 72 young people who are new to the job market coming from the following countries: Netherlands, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. Olde Vechte has its own training centre with the mission to improve personal and professional skills of young people in order to create a better society and a higher quality of life. For the last 20 years Olde Vechte has developed a new approach for youth programs, which brings an alternative to the traditional starts involving namegames, energizers and team-building activities. This approach is a new kick-off method which creates an equal starting point for all the participants, by being independent from any national identities. This clear starting point leads to better desired results. This kick-off method has also been used through a network of traditional partners which, to a different extent, applied them in several contexts: integration of minorities, outdoor education, media, entrepreneurship, environmental sustainability. Given our main focus in the empowerment of youth we want to use this method in connection with actual job market and question of long term unemployment of youngster across Europe. For this we envisioned 4 activities, which come in a sequential manner. Firstly, there will be a training course of 7 days for 27 youth workers coming from our partner organisations. These youth workers have been selected upon their wide experience and willingness to learn a new starting method. The training course will have the aim to allow the youth workers to develop facilitation skills in order to use this kick-off method. These youth workers will then have the chance to practice their facilitation skills by leading the 2 youth exchanges of 12 days connected with the theme of fulfilment in a jobless economy. Simultaneously, all of the partners will apply for and organize at least 2 youth exchanges during the 2 years of the project. This will allow for the method to be used in another contexts and more practice for the youth workers and more people to get acquainted and involved with this approach. As a final moment of the project, there will be a Follow-up activity. This final activity will have 3 main purposes: evaluating the project, creating the manuals of the kick-off method based upon the working experience of all the 9 organisations involved, and deepen the facilitation skills of the youth workers involved. The main method used during the activities will be experiential learning or learning by doing. Intercultural learning and informal learning will also be applied here. In order to support the learning process media will be used as a tool, throughout all the stages of exchange, from the preparation to follow-up. The use of media has the big advantage of producing a visible outcome, which can be easily disseminated. As we stated, our aim through this project is to increase the quality of youth projects done throughout Europe. This will be reflected through several expected results. 1) All the organisations involved will have youth workers (3/organisation) capable of using the method 2) A total of 18 youth exchanges allowing a minimum of 650 young people across Europe to participate and get acquainted with this method. Out of these 650 people, 90 will have the chance to participate in an exchange focused on aiming on creating fulfilment in jobless economy. 3) The partner organisations will have the chance to increase their network and partnerships through the 2 youth exchanges they will organize. 4) The opportunity for 162 people amongst youth workers and young people to be group leaders in these 18 exchanges and get practice on how to work with this kick-off method. 5) To allow 27 participants out of the 18 youth exchange to do EVS with one of the organisations involved (3 people/organisation). 6) 36 manuals of the kick-off method involving the best practices of the 9 organisations involved and a standard evaluation method. 7) To bring visibility to the implementation of this method in several contexts by using the social media channels of all the organisations involved. On the long run, this will allow to have a standard approach and method for starting youth exchanges supported by a standard evaluation method. Furthermore, there will be a network of organisations and youth workers capable of implementing this method in different contexts and with different target groups, and therefore capable of keeping the desired standard quality.

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