The project 'Building Young Role Models in Central Asia and Europe' (BY RC) has aimed at empowering young volunteers to become role models and agents of change in their local communities in Denmark, Kyrgyzstan and Romania. The project has set out to develop the project management and Life Skills capacities of young Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers and to develop culturally appropriate and socially relevant training material. The project has had the overall aim; 'To empower youth volunteers to become role models and competent active voices for improved health choices of vulnerable youth in Denmark, Kyrgyzstan and Romania.’ The project has sought to achieve its overall aim by focusing on three specific objectives that each covers a central theme namely; a) To build the capacity of Red Cross/Red Crescent youth volunteers to become progressive and competent leaders able to lead the non-formal life skills education of their peer volunteers and vulnerable youth.b) To address the health and life challenges of vulnerable youth in Denmark, Kyrgyzstan and Romania by developing non-formal life skills training schemes through the exchange of best practices c) Youth volunteers able to facilitate dialogue with public stakeholders in Denmark, Kyrgyzstan and Romania concerning initiatives and solutions for young people’s health and life style challengesThe project has developed a Life Skills manual that focuses on four main topics; Promoting healthy Life Choices, Youth and Sexual Health, Youth in Stressful situations and Social Media in Life Skills perspective. The manual is a guide for youth volunteers on how to facilitate Life Skills activities for young people. It covers the promotion of important basic skills, that young people need in order to manage their daily lives, live healthy and to actively engage in society.The activities in the handbook have been selected and co-created by a team of young, dedicated volunteers who through the BY RC project have been working on producing the units in this handbook.Focus is on empowering youth through participatory exercises stimulating self-development and reflection as well as developing skills for living in society. Acquiring basic Life Skills is essential when building young people’s capacity to actively engage in life. Hence the activities in this handbook represent a strategic response to a key objective within the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement: empowering youth to become Change Agents in their local communities.The manual has been translated into English, Romanian and Kyrgyz and is available free of charge at red-y.org or by contacting any of the partners in the project.The partners have through the project developed their capacity to support youth in becoming active citizens in their own local area and inspire other young people to make healthy life Choices. The project has fostered international cooperation among youth volunteers in Denmark, Romania and Kyrgyzstan by strengthening their individual capacities and skills through non-formal learning methods for coping and tackling critical life challenges.

The project “Social Innovation with New and Active Citizens” has for 24 months, worked towards strengthening and empowering young minorities, migrants, refugees and local youth in becoming active citizens with respect for democratic values, fundamental rights and intercultural understanding. The project has been implemented by Red Cross societies in Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary and Romania.The background for this project was that all partners had witnessed an influx of refugees and migrants to their countries, while at the same time negative attitudes towards migrants and minorities were widespread in all countries and on the rise with populism spreading all over Europe. As a result, e.g. Roma communities are subject to considerable social and economic vulnerability partly due to discimination and exclusion. A needs assessment showed that the challenges for the target groups are common across the countries. Although Romania has received fewer migrants than the other countries and Denmark has a small Roma population, the stereotypes of minorities and migrants persist in all partner countries. Against this backdrop, the immediate objective of the project was that: Young minorities, migrants and local youth in Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary and Romania have increased opportunity and strengthened capacity to support socially inclusive communities through participation in innovative volunteer driven activities. The main target groups have been minority populations such as Roma communities, migrants, refugees, young volunteers in the partner organizations, other civil society organizations as well as public authorities (ministries, municipalities). The general public has also been a target group for awareness raising and the project partners have worked closely with media to disseminate the information and activities that the project produced. The projected succeeded in engaging voulnteers to develop innovative volunteer driven activities, whereby the young volunteers empowered themselves through improved life skills, self-confidence and a sense of inclusion. The project activities were focused around two thematic pillars: Life skills and peer-to-peer dialogue.The project partners all succeeded in translating and adapting the Life skills manual developed by the Danish Red Cross Youth, to reflect each countries’ needs in close cooperation with youth volunteers, minorities and migrants. Bulgarian Red cross held a transnational training of trainers, during which experts from the Danish Red Cross Youth trained youth volunteers from Bulgaria, Denmark and Romania to become Life Skills Trainers. The main objective has been to establish a strong theoretical background for Life Skills and integrate this into the regional RC branches and existing training/workshop practices, which overall has been a success. The Life skills program has become completely youth-led and owned; the volunteers chose the groups they would like to work with, and, with the assistance of the project coordinators, changed and added to the existing materials according to the feedback of the participants. The participants in the Life skills activities are not seen as a “target group”, but as equal partners in the development and implementation of activities, and they are encouraged to improve the program based both on the local context and their own experiences as representatives of different minority and/or vulnerable groups. This has also led to widening the anticipated number of participants. There have been participants with disabilities, as well as young people from different other minorities besides Roma and migrants, such as participants with different ethnical background, sexual orientation and foster children, etc. Hence the project has resulted in increased opportunities for more groups. The peer-to-peer based community dialogue activities involved local youth, minorities, and migrants to come up with, develop and facilitate peer-to-peer dialogue on topics on discrimination, social inclusion and critical thinking. Hungarian Red Cross hosted a transnational training of trainers in peer-to-peer dialogue and the partners all developed innovative peer-to-peer activities, the common denominator being, to discuss, adjust and continuously refine the activities with the inclusion of minorities, migrants and local youth. The peer-to-peer activities have had impact at local, national and European level: At European level the project has established a transnational network of young motivated volunteers who are sharing knowledge, experiences, best practices and innovative methods in conducting social youth work. At the national level young volunteers have increased their capacities and gained knowledge on initiating dialogue and cooperating effectively with local authorities, media and other civil society organizations. Furthermore, the partners and other stakeholders have gained increased awareness about the situation of minorities and migrants.

REFUGE-ED will create the Brokering Knowledge Platform of Effective Practices (BKP), which will host and promote innovative high-quality solutions tailored for the dynamic integration of migrant and refugee children in schools and more broadly in society. In so doing, REFUGE-ED will identify, implement, and evaluate existing evidence-based practices in education and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) that have shown to promote the educational success, well-being and sense of belonging of children (0 to 18 years old - ISCED 0-3) from recent migration cohorts, including refugees and asylum seekers, and unaccompanied minors. The ground breaking nature of the BKP is two-folded: on the one hand, it will rely jointly on education and MHPSS; on the other, it will feature dialogic co-creation with children, families, teachers, policy-makers, practitioners working on the ground and other relevant stakeholders. REFUGE-ED will capitalise on the social impacts of prior EU research in the field of MHPSS and education, using the Supportive Process for the Inclusion of Children’s Experience (SPICE) under the communicative methodology of research for the co-creation of knowledge and implementation of results. The REFUGE-ED project will carry out 3 multisite pilot actions across 6 countries (Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria), in a total of 33 Communities of Learning and Practice, that is, hot spots/reception identification centres, inclusive school environments and non-formal and informal social and learning environments, and institutional care (including unaccompanied minors). Informed by these pilots, the final co-created BKP will provide tools, solutions and recommendations, including guidelines and criteria on capacity building training, solution adaptation and community engagement in easy to use off-line package, in different formats, to support the implementation, reuse and scalability of the piloted actions, and of other practices identified as successful.

Mental health disorders afflict more than one-third of the EU’s population each year with an annual economic cost to the EU of €432 billion. The ‘COllaborative Network for Training and EXcellence in psychoTraumatology’ (CONTEXT) is an international, interdisciplinary European Industrial Doctorate (EID) designed to address deficiencies in psychotraumatology training and innovation. A key feature of CONTEXT is the minimum 50% secondment of each ESR to the non-academic sector. Consistent with the requirements of an EID, this component grants ESRs access to populations not otherwise accessible in standard doctoral training programmes. This design will facilitate a new cohort of researchers and practitioners who can translate research into practice, thereby mitigating the impact of psychotrauma in the EU. The goal of CONTEXT is to develop a high quality, innovative research training programme to build capacity and expertise, and foster innovative practice and social enterprise in the area of psychotraumatology. The nine beneficiaries of CONTEXT represent a diverse, interconnected, intersectoral consortium, well placed to collaboratively train and supervise the 12 ESRs. Three interconnected research work packages, each targeting a priority population in Europe (EU-based asylum seekers and refugees, WP3; emergency-service personnel and humanitarian first-responders, WP4; and victims and perpetrators of childhood- and gender-based violence, WP5), address current and emergent skill and professional deficiencies that are essential in curbing the adverse social consequences of trauma-related psychological distress within the EU. CONTEXT enjoys significant support and commitment from highly regarded, international stakeholders and influencers at the political, scientific, and professional level.