"Energy efficiency and sustainability in homes and other private &public entities is a topic that very few individuals and local authorities, SME's and other entities pay attention to. This topic is quite popular, but also highly needed across Europe and the profession of sustainability advisor is starting to emerge on the market, especially attracting the interest of young people. Green jobs are the future of societies, either as completely independent jobs dealing only with environmental issues, or as segments that are introduced in variety of professions. Nevertheless, in Macedonia green jobs are lacking on the market and obviously there is a high need for them. All of the units of local governments have a chapter in their strategic documents which clearly states the need for interventions in the field of environmental protection and green economy. In the last few months the applicant Eco Logic has worked on preparation and verification of the first of this kind VET programme in Macedonia - related to forming a completely new profession in the country: ""Sustainability Advisors"". The other organizations and countries involved in the project, besides the coordinator have interest to develop similar programmes in their own countries and in their field of work, but need further share of information, good practice and experience related to the process itself. There is also another organization from Macedonia, which also works with development of VET programmes in fields other than sustainability and environment. The idea is to exchange practices in order to improve the above mentioned ongoing VET programme on sustainability advisors developed in Macedonia, by combining and adding several components which are not included in the current programme. The topics that are targeted within the action are meant for the same target group, unemployed people, both male and female, including people from marginalized groups. The needs of these people and in general described as: retraining. And in relation to the availability of open job positions in the green sectors, the demand is high, in many various industries in a given community. Within this proposal the main target country in which transfer of knowledge, experience and share of good practices will be Macedonia, where the current demand in the green sector is several thousands workers (mainly in energy efficiency & audit). The partners from Poland and Austria as EU developed countries will be transferring knowledge and share practices with Macedonia. The target groups of the project will primarily be people that are working within the topic of interest, such as: representatives from municipalities (3 municipalities per country, 5 representatives per municipality), representatives from civil society sector that work in the sustainability field, and/or field of development of new VET programmes and curriculum for young people - 5 organizations each, 2 people per organization. These will be the multipliers Other people involved in the exchange of good practices are stakeholders and multipliers in adult education (i.e. energy training, environmental audit and eco standards, sustainability consultants and sustainable development education, environmental education and so on), but the project will as well address teachers for youth and young adults. With these people series of meetings will be held, face to face and also online in order to exchange experience and good practices. Objective(s): -Objective 1: Innovative improvement of educational programmes related to green jobs and environmental sectors, and making them in line with EU policies, through exchange of good practices between member states and candidate state - while also opening of key dialogue with political actors, CSO’s, business community and others. -Objective 2: Involving Local Authorities, CSO’s & SME's in processes for policy/programme improvement in relation to sustainable development, energy efficiency, and green jobs, locally but also at EU level. -Objective 3: Matching skills of unemployed people with labor market needs in line with EU’s best practices - based upon share of good practices and experiences. - Results related to Objective 1: VET programme ""Sustainability Advisors"" developed by Eco Logic is improved through a process of share of good practices among the consortium, and interest for development of similar VET programmes is expressed by the partners. - Local authorities, CSO's and SME's are familiar in depth about the potential of young people through prequalification and participation in VEin sustainable community development, and showed interest to make efforts in order to involve young people with green VET certificates in their daily work in near future. - Document for future creation of ""Sustainability Advisor"" programme with comments on matching skills of unemployed people with labour market needs is created and discussed among the target groups and key stakeholders."

Living Land project develops an experimental framework for Youth Employability and EngagementApproach, promoting youth worker’s capabilities. LL aims to support and enhance young skills andcompetences through a link between social workers (in the PA- Public Administration) and youthworkers (in NPO- Non Profit Organization). This approach uses youth work as an occasion tosupport vulnerable young group entering in the job market, but also feeling part of their communities.PA (municipalities, province, mountain community/parks) work together with the local NPO detectingvulnerable situations (NEET, unemployed young, economic and social disadvantages, disabilities,school drop-out), offering inclusion activities, bringing them closer to the job market. These activitiesaim to involve young in apprenticeship or traineeship experience linked with social and citizenshipskills empowerment. The young involved become part of their community, with a strategic role and aleadership, promoting their empowerment and the recognition of their formal and non-formal skillsand capabilities. It also fosters young assessment of transversal skills, in a Life Skills perspective.The 2 years’ project develops an innovative methodology at a local level, able to empower youthemployability services and youth workers’ competences. We’d like to build a model accessible,replicable by different bodies or groups (NPO or PA) in order to facilitate any kind of non-formalactivities to be carried out locally, valorizing, mapping and linking existing experiences for young. Thekey objective is to innovate youth workers approach, taking in charge vulnerable young. The otherkey objective is the creation of intervention model (LL Web Platform and Guidelines KIT) aimed tostrength skills of youth workers and policy makers. The project would like to create an effective andoperational tool to implement employability policies at local, national and European level. The localand final events and dissemination activities will be strategic in order to communicate and inform theeffective impact that the project could arise. During the transnational meeting, partner will exchangepoint of views and will define the content of the intellectual outputs. The training will be useful to 20youth workers ready to run out the pilot test locally. LL Guidelines KIT (01 output) will be a tool fortraining and it will contain examples, best practices and information about youth employabilitystrategies. LL Web Platform (02 output) is an open access platform, with an easy and comfortableapproach to be used by each youth workers or bodies (PA or NPO) to implement activities for younglocally. LL is based on the young needs expressed in several year’s experience by the partners.Especially the needs to imagine a possible future and find a place in the world, giving meaning totheir time; to know and test skills and competences, getting involved in an adult perspective; to havean adult key player as a reference that welcomes and accompanies them during the experience andbeyond; to share experiences with peers and belong to a real group; to be recognized and discoveredin their capabilities by the adult community; to learn new things, through a theoretical-practicaltraining, and to compete in new contexts, different for example from school and family. LL stressesthe youth spirit strengthening the capabilities of youth workers in charge to support them.The project, through a pilot action, at the end and after the project end involves at least 1 PA in eachCountry and 3 NPOs collecting and uploading to the platform some experiences addressed at leastto 150 young among Europe. The project is based on the recent EU reflections about Traineeship and Apprenticeship systems, whose relevance and priority is emphasized by the EU documents andnational local policies, such as The Guidebook for Policy Planners and Practitioners, but also reflectsthe suggestions of National Ministries regarding the construction of stronger competencies of youthworkers in charge of these measures, who play a critical role in helping young people make asmoother transition from school to work (STW) or to find the right way to express their competencesand skills. Empirical evidence suggests that both types of schemes can significantly improve youngpeople’s employment prospects by contributing to the acquisition of work-related skills andexperience in close alignment with employer requirements, leading to nationally recognizedqualifications, enhancing young people’s links to the labour market, and providing young people withvaluable first work experience. The consortium, involving 5 partners in 5 EU countries, isrepresentative of a wide spectrum of Countries and of skills thanks to the involvement of importantand articulated professional profiles and experiences.

The project’s primary goal was building partner organizations’ capacities for working with youth struggling from forced migration and involving them into local communities. Although we came up with the project’s idea almost 4 years ago, throughout the project’s lifetime, its topic has been still sharp and crucial. In feeling the project’s topicality for future years, despite COVID restrictions and fatal obstacles the project team faced, we worked hard in order to satisfy a youth need of better social adaptation while being migrants. We did it by introducing a new methodology allowing mixed non-formal and formal education into our partner organizations’ every day work. The tools for migrant youth involvement we were equipped with as we started the project were lacking a cross-sector methodology for NGOs-universities networks. Partner NGOs and academic bodies were not guided on ways of putting mutual efforts into adaptation of young migrants from the perspective of social communication and career pathway. Thus, in following our planned activities and taking decisions about their changes under the pressure of the pandemic, we managed to shape a strong network of youth organizations (NGOs + university) for involving migrant youth across Europe and countries of Eastern partnership. We strongly believe that after the project, the established network of organizations and activists provide necessary assistance and keep young migrants safe from the risk of radicalization and wrong life choices. This belief rests on the project’s direct fit with the objectives of participating organizations. In embracing now about 3,000 young migrants, the university partner seeked to mix formal education methods with non-formal tools provided by NGOs. The project gathered experienced representatives with various professional backgrounds working for NGOs and the university who launched intercultural dialogue, created migrant-focused sustainable youth networks and developed relevant methodology underpinned by a mix of non-formal and formal education tools. All this enhanced their personal and organizational capacities for better involvement of migrant youth into local communities. It is worth mentioning here that the project participants have made a true difference for themselves due to intercultural communication between young migrants and social activists.The most important outcome of the project maybe identified as shaping new friendly and tolerant environment for young migrants to be involved into local communities by helping some of them to avoid fears and believe in positive future in new society, training local youth activists to continue changing environment for better migrants’ adaptation and shaping a network ready to operate effectively. This main outcome could be produced by all the project participants due to the fact that we obeyed principles of innovative project methodology introduced as a pillar of all activities. Giving hope and support to hundreds of young migrants as a result of successful stories about new life shared by youngsters via the inspirational portal is also one of the main project outcomes. Unusual youth contributions across countries in “YOUth-to-YOUth” communication manner evoked faith and optimism about young migrants’ social activity, finding friends and following good career paths in other countries.Finally the project taught us to act under complete uncertainty and irresistible force. 3 years of projects instead of planned 2 because of the COVID pressure brought positive results. We learnt how to make fast changes with minimum losses and be resilient to challenges.

<< Background >>Our project answers the challenge of the decreasing level of creative thinking in a typical western educational system since 1990 while lacking proper response to this issue, while creativity through the years is climbing to the top of most important soft skills. Creativity has been indicated in the “4Cs” list of 21st-century skills, which is the list of 4 most important skills: critical thinking (also strongly linked with creative thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity) to succeed at school and the workplace. World Economic Forum (WEF) reports that a recent IBM poll of 1500 CEOs identified creativity as the no. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. In the WEF “Future jobs report” poll of the most relevant 10 skills, creativity jumped from 10th place in 2015 to 3rd place in 2020. Moreover, it is a human skill, which can’t be automated, it is equally important as a mean of adaptation, which is more needed now than ever, and we all had a chance to see and experience that fact when we were caught off the guard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers suggest that most probably creative behaviours are favoured in the evolutionary context. Creativity serves the development of entire societies, but on the other hand, as mentioned at the beginning, the creative thinking scores keep decreasing, mainly because of the lack of space in the educational system for creative activities, creative teaching and creating creative environments. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children. As a project consortium, after researching on the topic and assessing the needs of the youngsters we work with, we strongly believe that it might be the role of non-formal educators to design creative environments full of engaging activities to nurture this crucial skill. The objectives of our project listed below will contribute to supporting the non-formal (but not only) sector in taking this responsibility and bringing change in thinking about creativity.Our project aims to stimulate, enlarge and preserve the creative potential of young people, youth workers and youth organisations coming from Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia, but also other European and non-European countries by giving them the self-managed tangible tool in the form of a creative workbook (Creative Playbook) developed in the process of exchanging practices of 3 participating organisations active in the field of creativity and youth work.<< Objectives >>Our project aims to stimulate, enlarge and preserve the creative potential of young people, youth workers and youth organisations coming from Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia, but also other European and non-European countries by giving them the self-managed tangible tool in the form of a creative workbook (Creative Playbook) developed in the process of exchanging practices of 3 participating organisations active in the field of creativity and youth work. This goal will be achieved by following objectives: - To exchange practices regarding creativity education and youth work of 3 Partner organisations and persons involved directly in the project- To work on and create new innovative practices and approaches regarding fostering the creativity of young people and sum them up in Creative Playbook- To train directly 12 youth workers coming from Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia in using the creative non-formal methods and increasing the quality of their work with youth and encouraging them to become multipliers of the project results.- To create and issue a new innovative tool (Creative Playbook) which will serve as an inspiration, educative and self-educative tool for all the groups, directly and indirectly, involved in the projects: staff, organisations, youth workers, and youth- To test the Creative Playbook on 24 youngsters from 3 countries during blended mobility- To introduce the creative playbook (result) to 90 people, participants of multiplier events in Poland, Czech Republic and Latvia as a tool for more attractive education and at the same time self-education for users of a wide age range.- To promote and encourage usage of the result – Creative Playbook, ensuring the inclusion of various groups by issuing the book in 4 languages (PL, LV, CZ and ENG) and in 2 versions: paper copy and downloadable version.<< Implementation >>During the project, we will implement the following activities:-Kick-off meeting in Poland - January 2022-Training course on creativity in the Czech Republic - April 2022-Working meeting in Latvia – July 2022-Mid-term evaluation meeting in the Czech Republic - October 2022-Blended mobility of youth people in Poland – February 2023-3 Multiplier Events in Poland, Latvia and the Czech Republic – May and June 2023-Evaluation meeting in Latvia – July 2023.<< Results >>The project result, the Creative Playbook, will be the foundation for other outcomes of our project. This book will contribute to increasing the quality and innovation of youth work. For youth, it will result in their empowerment, increased motivation for change and for self-development. For organisations (directly and indirectly involved in the project and the ones who will come across our playbook) it will also bring fresh insight, motivate and inspire change within the organisation. By using it, the staff will also gain a new perspective in looking at old problems and struggles, which can result in bringing change to their work and solving problems that seemed unsolvable before. What we expect already during the project duration is organisations having a more prosperous offer for youth in and out of the organisations by learning innovative approaches for addressing their target groups, by providing, for example, more attractive educational and training programmes. Already during the project, after the LTT in the Czech Republic, each participating organisation will benefit by having 3 youth workers equipped with the knowledge of how to encourage and motivate youth to use the playbook and how to shape creative habits. Youth workers with a deeper understanding of non-formal education and designing meaningful non-formal methods and tools fostering creativity, with the knowledge about transferring creative skills into everyday life benefits.We expect thanks to that the cooperation between organisations, youth workers and youth (target groups) will be strengthened and more efficient. Youth will be more willing to participate also in other activities offered by organisations. Another outcome that is expected already during the project is an open debate that will raise awareness on the importance of sustaining creative skills in life, in various contexts, but especially links between creativity and employability and innovation in communities. This will result in new solutions for problems existing in communities (ecological, exclusion, post-pandemic struggles). Moreover, we expect wider awareness among youth and within our communities about the Erasmus + Programme and other opportunities which boost and support active participation in community life, which will result in the new projects. Regarding the projects, we believe that implementing the project in this specific partnership will result in other project ideas answering the needs of our communities and contributing to the international youth work. Last but not least, on the completion of this project we already expect the employability of our youngsters to be strengthened. By already working on own creativity, gaining confidence in own skills, knowing the opportunities of Erasmus + and how they can be applied for their own benefit and benefit of communities.

Historically, young people have faced social exclusion, and the recent economic downturn has prompted high unemployment, which particularly affects the younger generation. However,some disadvantaged groups of young people face exclusion in the longer term for reasons beyond the current crisis. Remaining outside the global labor market has far-reaching consequences – not solely economic. These include a loss of confidence,an undermining of trust and expectations,and an increasing risk of social exclusion and disengagement from society. Apart from the economical crisis there are other issues that affect youth and lead to political crisis. Global threats such as terroristic attacks and armed conflicts caused a huge refugee and migration wave in Europe. These and many other factors stipulate increasing of intolerance,xenophobia,violence,conflicts oriented by cultural fears, numerous stereotypes and prejudices,intercultural misunderstanding,inability to think critically and lack of intercultural competence in general. Young people are more than others affected by those issues,especially being in a situation of current economic crisis. They feel afraid, they are frustrated, they don’t know what to feel and how to react, as a result they became either amorphus or join the extremist movements, and they definitely need to be supported in this hard situation by adults, by peers, by educational institution, by NGOs and by policy makers. Tackling youth unemployment,social exclusion,intercultural communication and youth participation continues to be a policy priority for European and national governments and the need to empower young people is increasingly recognized in this process. We see youth empowerment as an attitudinal,structural,and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults. In other words empowered young people will exercise power over one’s life by being skilled, critically aware, and active in creating community change. The long-term project “InFormal – integration of non-formal education approach to the formal education system for youth empowerment at local level” is an attempt to use non-formal education as a tool for youth empowerment in order to address all the mentioned issues and to build a stable and productive trans-national co-working platform for educators coming from formal education and youth field (NGOs and other youth authorities). LTTC objectives: • To unite efforts of youth workers coming from formal and other youth field backgrounds for youth empowerment at local level by using non-formal education • To build a cross sectorial network and to create joined actions to address the current challenges or for addressing the current challenges • To build a necessary set of competences for proficient use of NFE instruments and tools for youth empowerment at local level • To discuss the recognition of competences gained by NFE • To provide the possibility to plan, experiment and to get feedback to the NFE activities • To introduce and discuss the ways of integration of NFE activities to the system of formal education • To provide the opportunity to assess the quality of NFE activities and youth empowerment process at local level • To create a detailed guide in English with recommendations and concrete examples and references of using non-formal education approach within formal system. It will be uploaded to the online platform and shared though the aprtners network. The training course will unite 35 youth workers, youth leaders, teachers, professors, community leaders, and youth policy makers coming from Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Portugal, Korea, Luxembourg, Italy and Poland committed for long- term learning process and social change. After the project course we expect our participants:to change their way of work and to make it more participative and transparent for youth; to understand the approach and principles of non-formal education and to use it for youth empowerment;to be able to use non-formal education tools during lessons, lectures, meetings, sessions, training activities they organize – giving more freedom and responsibility to learners;to be equipped with a set of other tools of youth empowerment (coaching and mentoring); o become active actors in promoting youth participation at local level. As for the methods, all of them will be non-formal,no-frontal.The wider impact is on partner organizations. This can be called European level impact. By innovating their approaches partners can plan high quality projects and organize own trainings and multiplying the results of this projects separately in each country. Moreover, it is expected that this project will strenghten bonds between partner organizations even more, and they can also learn from new ones in the partnership, so it would result in further common projects.