"It is commonly accepted that the international economic crisis the past few years has hit the southern European countries to a greater extent, with important economic and social consequences. The victims of this reality were mostly young people, who were challenged to face social, family and personal challenges. In many cases, research for personal identity, separation from the true self, lack of purpose, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual disorientation, violence, dropping out of school or university and the increasing amount of NEETs has led to anxiety, depression and even suicide. Based on the above mentioned framework of all the above, the aim of this Transnational (Greece, Portugal and Italy) Youth Initiative “GO Alive"", with duration of 2 years, is the self-empowerment of young people with fewer opportunities in Siatista, Rio Tindo and San Cesario di Lecce, using Mindfulness, Leadership, and Community Building tools of non formal education, in order for them to discover their true selves and their role in their community. In order to achieve that, this Transnational Initiative was inspired and initiated by the young people of the three partners Greek Odysseuses, Pista Mágica and VulcanicaMente, using the structure of three main pillars, which include the following objectives of the project: - Mindfulness and self-development: 1). to motivate 15 young Initiates, 5 from each country, in order to find or define the purpose of their lives and self-identify themselves with conscious 2). to actively involve additionally 20 young people from each of the three local communities and familiarize them with the concept of Mindfulness - Development of leadership skills: 3). to identify their needs as well as the skills of the 15 Initiates in order for them to become leaders and role models in their community 4). to train them using non-formal education and peer learning by acquiring leadership, organizational and business skills 5). to apply the skills they have acquired in their local community by organising local workshops - Building the community: 6). to create conscious communities in each country of the project 7). to exchange good practices and experiences, while promoting the Erasmus + program and the Transnational Youth Initiatives 8). to create a non-profit organization in Siatista so as to support these communities and the local young by promoting personal development and mindfulness. The target group of the project is the young people of our three regions aged 21-28, as anthropology, spirituality and psychology support that our life is divided into circles of 7 years. We will focus on young people going through the 4th cycle ""Maturity"" (21-28 years), because at this age, many of us feel the need to leave our family, make our own decisions and live our own life, so we often have to deal with everyday problems related to independent living, building of important interpersonal relationships and the conflict of our desires, ideas and expectations with our reality, the labor market and our financial obligations. Primary attention will be given to youth belonging in socially vulnerable groups, especially NEETs, as well as to young people with fewer opportunities due to economic difficulties and geographical criteria. During the 2 years (September 2018-August 2020) many local activities have been planned to Ben implemented, as well as 4 international meetings: 1. Initial Transnational Project Meeting in September 2018 in Greece, with the participation of 6 young people (2 by each partner) in order to finalize the last details of the project’s implementation 2. Physical mobility in Italy of the 15 Initiates under the coordination of the Italian partner VulcanicaMente for 6 days in November 2018 in order to exchange good practice among young people on Mindfulness, in the context of a blended mobility 3. Short-term joint staff training event (4 days) under the coordination of the Portuguese partner Pista Mágica in Portugal in April 2019 for the 15 Initiates so as to develop leadership and volunteering skills and be introduced to social entrepreneurship 4. Final Transnational Project Meeting in April 2020 of the 15 Initiates in Greece to exchange good practices and experiences, to create future projects and to promote Erasmus +. The impact of the ""GO Alive” Transnational Youth Initiative will not be limited to local participants but will have, also, a sustainable positive national and European impact through the NGO set up in Siatista by the members of the informal youth group of ""Greek Odysseus""."

"<< Background >>Voluntary work is a way to reinforce ones activity, personal development, inclusion and participation in society. Youngsters and young adults with mental health problems or other difficulties and reasons to exclusion, need more guidance and support to enable their volunteering process as well as their capacity building. Through volunteering also influencing the society is possible. It gives an individual the possibility to concretely act for the environment and to get a feeling of self-capability and self-efficacy. Therefore the threshold to participation should be as low as possible, despite of mental and other social barriers of the stakeholders, and also when the volunteering takes place in an other European country. International inclusive volunteering management for youth with mental health problems needs structures and networks so that the participating is safe and the approach of youth workers takes root to be mental sensitive. To reach the best and current research results as the base for building the training, methodology and handbook, the project partners have decided to make desk and field research as basis to all other project results to survey the existing circumstances of youth supported volunteering in Europe.<< Objectives >>It is often seen, that people with mental health problems are not financially productive members of society, and therefore not the first target group receiving the resources for developing themselves, even if they are young with all life ahead of themselves. Still the potential within these young people is huge, it just needs to be channeled with support from professionals. One of the best ways of motivating people is not to force them to act, but to give possibilities of participation, self-expression and activity. When the motivation comes from individuals themselves it will also lead far and last long. That is what volunteering is about. It is a two-way process where both the volunteer and the target of volunteering gain in dialogue, build their capacity and use their inner potential.Supported and inclusive volunteering is like a bridge from social exclusion to more demanding working, and the participation in meaningful voluntary work increases the feeling of being a member of community. Due to the experience with Sosped's culture house model, in which young people with mental health problems are trained to be voluntary peer supporters and lead peer groups to other youngsters, we have concretely noticed the unused potential of young people who are excluded from society out of different reasons. Development and innovating of volunteering is also an essential part of Pista Magica's and Stando's procedure. In this cooperation the partner MaMa as a roof-organization for Slovenian youth centers provides the possibility to test the results with youth workers. The results are also tested in all national multiplier events of Volunteer and Go!In the future society the concept of volunteering should not be seen as social obligation but as an opportunity to influence. Acting as voluntary worker changes one's position from being a target of help to an active operator in life. That change of thinking is very essential when recovering from mental problems. The positive impacts of the volunteering activity lead to improvement of self esteem and activity in other sectors of life as well. The transnational project partners Sosped, Stando, Pista Magica and MaMa share the same core values and the desire in developing inclusive volunteering and participation possibilities for marginalized youth and other target groups.<< Implementation >>In Volunteer and go! the partner organizations make desk and field research and develop methodology and guidelines as well as a mental sensitive handbook to enhance young adults possibilities to volunteer in EU area. Sosped coordinates Vol'Go! and promotes and reviews the project, focusing on its project management and on adaptability in changing situations, and constant, regular feedback. The project activities to gain the expected impacts are: (1a) A kick off online meeting will be organized at the beginning of the project. The meeting will bring all key project partners together in order to share information and to launch project planning. During this first online meeting partners deal the suitable cycle for meeting structure for the whole project period. Project status meetings will be carried out throughout the project by using online conference calls with project partners to report and follow on the status of the project. The meeting minutes will be recorded and openly shared with all project partners by the coordinator. (1b) First TPM will content concrete kick-off action plan steps and review and benchmark planned project objectives and team building exercises. (2) Project team meetings as well Steering Committee will take place throughout the project to review and update listed action items as well as to add additional items when needed. (3) Action Item list will be used to support tracking outstanding actions needing to be completed within the project. (4) Checklists, as to organizing the events, gives additional support to the Action Item list and therefore the project partners. (5) The meeting minutes of the professionals will be recorded and openly-shared at project status meetings, learning events and transnational project meetings. The young peer usually want to share their experiences in confidence, so we don't record the Finnish LTT but the results will be collected in a memo.(6) To support monitoring and controlling the progress of the project, online communication tools will be used for the project team meetings and scheduled project status meetings. That will help to enhance information and knowledge sharing as well as to promote communication between all project partners efficiently and helps to set direction in order to achieve the projects objectives. Also, it will help facilitate conditions for easy invoice and staff management. Providing a channel for everyone's ideas and opinions will help to get problems and potential problems out in the open, thus make problem solving easier. It allows the coordinator to respond quickly and efficiently to change, enabling to undertake the appropriate action to prevent or minimize the damage it might cause. (7) Three transnational project meetings (TPM) will be held during the project in different partner countries. The first is for preparing, planning, organizing and halfway control of developmental processes of the Project Results. In the second meeting project partners will evaluate the project outcomes and identify and develop a plan of action for further cooperation and development of the method. This second meeting will also begin the combining of the previous Project Results into final one. The Last TPM will be held in the end of the project for end evaluation and closing purposes. (8) Peer working will be the main model used during the transnational meetings e.g. interactive group activities, discussion groups and workshops. This approach is mutually beneficial and involves the sharing of knowledge and good practices, thus supporting the project objectives. Then evaluations according the following: (a) Observations from fieldwork at project results and conference as to a description of activities and the overall effect (b) Feedback of participants’ feelings, knowledge, opinions, experiences, testing the training(c) Statistical data on the number of participants attending the transnational meetings and conference(d) Other possible evaluations<< Results >>The Vol'Go! will have four Project Results that are research (PR1), methodology and guide for inclusive volunteering (PR2), and a mental sensitive handbook ""How to Volunteer and Go!"" (PR3). In PR4 these are combined to a larger visualized and translated (in Finnish, Slovene, Greek and Portuguese) material combination for dissemination that contains the report of the desk and field research, methodology, guide for youth inclusive volunteering, a mental sensitive handbook for users and training materials that are piloted and tested in all multiplier events (4) during the project. The LTT's build the capacity of all participants. The project will have its own website, administrated by the project coordinator. The guide and handbook will be printed and all the materials are shared on the website to offer familiarization and ensure sustainability and free download possibility of the outcomes for everyone also in the future."

NGOs deal with a wide range of challenges on their day-to-day management routine. Concerning those human resources, volunteers are largely underestimated and when they are appreciated, it is usual to suffer troubles as the current tools needed to coordinate them are different from the ones applied to normal paid staff on the third or private sector. According to this, non profit and volunteering organisations demand new accessible VET tools for their teams and a professionalization of the field that could create the suitable environments for the development of those working on it.Following this need, “Levol-app: learning app for the VET on volunteering management programmes” appeared to overcome the lack of new learning pathways orientated to cover the real profesional needs of non profit organisations and their teams. It was a 28-month strategic partnership at EU level funded by Erasmus+ and its Key Action 2 for the development of VET coordinated by Pista Mágica – Associação (Portugal) with the support of Neo Sapiens (Spain), Associazione di Promozione Sociale Futuro Digitale (Italy), Platforma dobrovolnickych centier a organizacii (PDCO) (Slovakia) and the Birmingham voluntary Service Council (BVSC) (United Kingdom). It joined together more than 300 participants from the five project countries related to non profit organisations who cooperated with Levol-app partners on the detection of the project target group needs, tested the outputs created and contributed with their feedback to improve the materials developed before their final publication when the project finished. The participation of such a wide range of participants allowed to work together and exchange good practices related to the training of those responsible of the creation and coordination of volunteer management programmes (at local or international level). As a result, partners created an online platform on five languages to support NGOs on the creation or improvement of programmes to better engage volunteers as active citizens and improve the competences and professional skills of the volunteer managers: https://www.levol-app.eu/outputs/The materials and training online developed deal with topics such as planning a high impact volunteer program, organizing volunteers, creating volunteer positions, recruiting the right volunteers, matching volunteers to work, preparing volunteers for success, supervising volunteers for maximum performance, measuring volunteer program effectiveness, recognition of volunteers, etc. All the participants taking part on the project were not only able to test and use this tool to create their own volunteering programmes, but had also the support of personal coaches on each partner country who helped them to implement the knowledge acquired along the project.During the implementation of Levol-app, partner organisations run together different activities in the five countries involved such as:- Four coordination meetings on the project countries to get to know the best practices and local projects related to volunteering management and training.- Local meetings and focus groups on different parts of each partner country to meet the target group of the project and establish the needs to be covered by the platform created.- A transnational training course for volunteer management coaches to capacitate them on the use of the project outputs, online platform and materials.- Online activities for learners (NGOs’ staff and volunteers) interested on creating or improving the volunteer programmes of their organisations.- Five multiplier events on each partner country to disseminate the project results and promote its outputs.-The design and publication of recognition tools to reward the training and volunteering programmes of those NGOs taking part in the project (ex. certificates, a seal, a special section on the project site for collaborators, etc.).All these activites have made possible to build a tailor-made learning pathway for NGOs and their staff about volunteering coordination that contributes to cover the lack of VET for professionals on this sector. The tool created to contain this training materials has been well recognized by all the participants involved on the project not only as a way to create volunteering management programmes, but also as a reference or checking device to supervise already existing processes to handle volunteers and upgrade them. As a consequence, Levol-app partners have success on developing a new innovative material covering the main needs of its potential target groups but also allowing them to adapt the knowledge provided to their own contexts and structures of their organisations. All the results of Levol-app are being openly shared by the project website (https://www.levol-app.eu/) that does not only contains information about it, but also contains all its outputs and provide a permanent access to the online training platform created.

The Glocal Move: Local Action, Global Impact project creates a 5 civil society organizations partnership whose purpose is to develop, for 26 months, two main products. The first one is a “gamified” digital platform for the civic participation of young people, with two main objectives: 1) to create challenges that can be implemented at local, national and European level and that contribute to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and 2) increase youth involvement and civic participation, whether at local, national or European level. The second product is a guide to support the use of the platform that allows youth workers to develop techniques to dynamize the platform. The idea for this project arises from the verification of two facts: 1) only two European countries - Ireland and Germany - are among those where civic participation is highest worldwide, and 2) the level of civic participation among the youngest - young people aged 15 to 29 - has not increased significantly at a global scale in the past 7 years (data from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) World Giving Index, A global view of giving trends October 2018 report (www.cafonline. org)). This new platform is intended to be a space in which young people and organizations whose work is directed to them organize themselves collaboratively, in a “gamified” format, to enable active involvement in activities that can range from small solidarity gestures, carried out individually and punctually, to organized actions, such as participation in public or political matters, including defense / support to specific causes, obtaining information from public authorities, associative participation or volunteering.The project will have 8 components: 1) management; 2) platform (Intellectual Output 1); 3) guide for youth workers (Intellectual Output 2); 4) transnational project meetings; 5) inter-partner training; 6) multiplier events; 7) communication; 8) dissemination and sustainability. These 8 components will be coordinated by the project's promoter, Pista Mágica - Escola de Voluntariado and each partner will be responsible for one or more components of the project, so that the results are the two products identified above. It is intended to have an impact on the youth layer of society, increasing the number of young people and organizations involved in local projects, with a global impact.

<< Objectives >>Youth problem gambling has become the growing public health issue. Gambling prevalence among 16 years adolescents in 33 European countries was 22.6 % in 2018. Vulnerable groups such as young people as active online users are at high risk of exposure to gambling advertising on social media. The Gambling Free Feed project aims to support young people, especially at-risk gamblers, affected ones and professionals to build healthier attitudes towards gambling to prevent gambling related harms.<< Implementation >>During the project we are going to develop experts by experience model to prevent gambling related harms, volunteer work model to reduce youth gambling related harms and e-learning training platform to prevent youth gambling harms. We are also implementing volunteer work by campaigning and influencing (youth for responsible gambling culture). The important activity is to ensure youth participation in the field of gambling harms prevention.<< Results >>Youth gambling related attitudes changes through active participation and volunteering. Young people, their closed ones and professionals will get tools to recognize gambling content on social media and develop a critical approach to it. The outputs of the project will be a handbook for implementing gambling harms prevention in youth volunteer work and an e-learning training course to prevent and reduce youth gambling related harms.