About
The Non-formal academy of activities is targeted at young people (18-30 years).
The project “Catch it! Non-formal academy of activities” is aimed at enhancing the quality and relevance of the non-formal learning offer in youth work of 3 project partnership organizations (Association Education by the Internet, Poland; Business Academy Aarhus, Denmark; University of Aveiro, Portugal) by developing new and innovative approaches and supporting the dissemination of best practices.
Additional aims of the project: enhancing key competences of 24 young people from Denmark, Portugal and Poland regarding entrepreneurship, languages and digital skills, creativity, group work skills, time management skills, by participation in testing and implementation of the method of non-formal academy of activities; professional development of 9 youth workers; simplification of access to open educational resources (OER) in the youth field for 150 participants by disseminating intellectual outputs events.
High unemployment among young people is the main reason why we decided to focus on young people and non-formal learning in our project. Unemployment, according to the statistics of July 2014, when the project proposal was made, in the 28 European Union countries affected 5 million young people under 25 years old. Around 7,5 million of young people were considered as NEETs (not employed, not in education and not in training). According to the European Commission and Eurostat, at the end of 2013 youth unemployment among young people up to 25 years old amounted to 27,4% in Poland, 12,9% in Denmark and 36,3% in Portugal (Eurostat). Currently, the rate of youth unemployment is 18,8% in the EU 28, with the rate of 20,8% in Poland, 10,8% in Denmark and 32,0% in Portugal (Employment and Social Developments in Europe, Annual Review 2016). Despite this positive development, important challenges remain. Still, young people are somehow disadvantaged in the labour market, even the youth unemployment rate continues to decline and there is an increase in the employment rate of young people and the proportion of young people in education.
The reasons of still such a high unemployment are complex and largely related directly to the circumstances of education system and cultural environment which young people grow up in. It is said that good education is the key for professional career. In reality, highly-qualified young people are struggling to find permanent employment. The education system is not flexible and it does not reflect the needs of the labour market. Thus, the project partners noticed an importance of enhancing the quality and relevance of the non-formal learning offer in youth work in the areas of: entrepreneurship, languages and digital skills, creativity, group work skills, time management skills.
To achieve the above project aims, the partners implemented the following activities:
• three project management meetings - transnational project meetings (one in each country)
• three study visits – short-term joint staff training events (one in each country)
• development of a method of Non-formal academy of activities - intellectual output and the development of OER (in four languages)
• testing and implementation of the method of Non-formal academy of activities - blended mobility (one in each country)
• a training course on the developed method of Non-formal academy of activities – short-term joint staff training events (in Poland)
• three conferences "Catch it!" - multiplier events (one in each country).
As the project focused on enhancing the quality and relevance of the non-formal learning offer in youth work of three project partnership organizations and supporting the dissemination of best practices, study visits in Poland, Denmark, Portugal took place at the very beginning of “Catch it! Non-formal academy of activities” project. After each study visits, the experts at our institutions could include the ideas from the presented best practices in creation of the project Intellectual output. In this publication, you will find out more about the impact of the above activities on the project results.
References:
Eurostat: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Employment and Social Developments in Europe, Annual Review 2016: http://ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=16828&langId=en
