We are currently living in unprecedented times where aspects and activities of our daily lives are, justifiably, being restricted for public health reasons. Millions of young people across Europe and the rest of world have spent weeks quarantining and self-isolating. The pandemic has had a range of serious consequences for young people such as: Loss of employment, uncertainty surrounding their education and financial uncertainty. These consequences are worsened by the daily challenges which many young people may be facing as a result of quarantine or self-isolating. Many young people will be suffering from loneliness, isolation and disconnection from their peers and the world around them. Although many of us may be feeling isolated and disconnected we are, now more than ever, all connected by one common obstacle. 'While We Wait' aims to reconnect young people and provide them with an opportunity and a platform to express their thoughts and feelings of the current pandemic and how it is impacting them. In collaboration with our Portuguese, Spanish and Italian partners, we will create a virtual platform where we will facilitate our participants to share their thoughts on views on a range of different social, political and economic issues which have become significant as a result of the pandemic. Our participants will have the opportunity to express their own challenges and feelings which have been caused by the pandemic. We hope to use all the different modes of virtual expression available to achieve this. We intend to record Zoom conversations of our participants discussing certain topics and encourage our participants to create art pieces to express themselves. These conversations and other forms of expression will be shared virtually among social media and the other forms of dissemination which the partners have available to them in order to allow other young people see that others are facing similar challenges. In 2021, once it is safe to travel again, we plan to host two separate blended youth mobility meetings. The first, which will be hosted by our Spanish partners, will give our participants the opportunity to witness the catalog or 'history book' which is subsequent of them sharing their opinions, expressions and creativity throughout our current crisis. During this meeting, we will decide the dissemination of the project. The young people will, rightfully, be in charge of this process and decide where in history does their creations belong and where it goes in the future. Our second blended youth mobility, which will be hosted by our Portuguese partners, will evaluate the project, from its current beginnings right until the end. We have agreed that each organisation will have 5 participants each, which in total is 20 participants. We are excited to be working with our partners for a number reasons. Firstly, we have worked with most of them before and had positive and insightful experiences. Additionally, we believe we will have interesting and diverse participants and opinions due to the participating countries. Spain and Italy have been the 2 worst hit countries from the pandemic within Europe and their citizens have been experiencing quarantining and isolation longer than we have in Ireland. Also, on the other hand, it is widely viewed that Portugal have reacted well to the current pandemic. This diversity will be interesting but also helpful on how young people can learn from each other. In addition, we are excited to be co-operating with our Portuguese partner again as we both share a common target group - young people from 'disadvantaged' socioeconomic backgrounds. We expect that our initial results on our participants will be less feelings of disconnection and isolation due to reconnecting with their peers. We also expect our participants, through sharing common challenges and thoughts, will be able to learn from their peers and be placed to overcome the challenges that they are facing as a result of the pandemic. We also believe that this process of peer-to-peer learning will have significant increase of empathy among our participants. Apart from our participants, we believe this project is capable of having a positive impact on others. We will publish and share our creations and results of bringing our participants together and we believe that others who may also have similar challenges and feelings as our participants can benefit from these publications. Additionally, we expect that, being responsible for the dissemination, our participants will develop their organisation skills, planning, teamwork etc. To conclude, we believe the potential long term benefits of this project to be significant as it will show that our organisations and youth work can continue to operate and be effective during a global crisis. This project will show that youth work can happen virtually and perhaps encourage others to do the same if a crisis like this occurs again.

<< Objectives >>Challenging the exclusion of young migrants, refugees & asylum seekers from NGOs and social movements (identified through direct experience and research [Make Minority a Prioriry, NYCI (2017)]. This project identifies and challenges these barriers by providing young people, NGOs & social movements with tools to enable access to diverse communities in their governance and actions (via e-Learning platform, youth ambassador program, ME's, and a charter for migrant-inclusive NGOs).<< Implementation >>The project contains three Transnational Partner Meetings, Research/Development actions, an Advanced Planning Visit, a Joint-Staff Training which pilots e-Learning content, a Blended Mobility Youth Ambassador training, and a Final Evaluation Meeting/Conference and Multiplier Events. There are three phases, Research/Development, Implementation, & Exploitation/Dissemination/Evaluation. The project will conclude with the launch of the Migration In Dialogue Network and Mentoring/Networking Program<< Results >>- Development of e-Learning modules - Migration in Dialogue Network launch, and associated mentoring and networking supports for young migrants. - Signing Charter with Municipalities and NGOs- Joint-Staff Training on migrant accessibility measure for NGOs- 25 Migrant Youth Ambassadors via Blended Mobility & 30 via e-Learning - Stimulated High-Level Political and Community dialogue on Migrant Access, via MEs and Final Conference - Consortium Capacity to engage in future KA2 action.

"This project proposal is associating spanish, italian and portuguese organizations working in the empowing and/or training youth from peripheral and rural areas. Those organisations are convinced that Youth, rural territories and creativity are key elements to face the different challenges that we are currently facing: COVID 19 crisis, but also the climate change emergency. During these last months we have witnessed how the health crisis and its set of restrictions (such as lockdown, social distancing, limits in meetings ...) are destroying the already rare and fragile spaces available for youth in rural areas.Through this project we intend to exchange ideas and experiences and to join forces in order to support Youth from rural areas in the creation of new local ecosystems for participation, collaboration and creativity to express themselves, connect, collaborate and formulate proposals and projects for the future of their territories, promoting new paradigms that seem more than needed nowaday.The project partners will carry out this task following the steps, experienced and results ( methods for facilitation, digital platform ...) of the ""#PeripheralEncounters for Arts, Culture and Youth"" pilot initiative that has been developed in the Alto Palancia county (Castellón / Spain) from September 2019 to July 2020.During the 16 months of the project, the partners will then structure their exchanges and intervention in the territory according to the following steps:- step 0: identifying local agents, creating local steering committees involving young people and local artists;- step 1: breaking the isolation of young people living in rural areas and encouraging their participation in creative and cultural actions linked to the life of their territories,- step 2: promoting collaboration in rural territories and fostering networking initiative both locally and globally,- step 3: creating and promoting new narratives about the past, present and future of rural territories;- step 4:evaluation of impactsTo accompany this process, the following activities will be organized:- 2 transnational project meetings (at the beginning and end of the project)- 3 international #PeripheralYouthMakers training courses to prepare steering comittees to lead steps 1, 2 and 3 of the project and to foster exchanges of experiences; - a minimum of 9 #PeripheralEncounters in each of the territories involved in the project: Alto Palancia region (Castellón / Spain), Aragon region, Peneda Gerês National Park in Portugal and Apennine Mountains National Park in the north of Italy.- an awareness campaign on “being young in rural settings” in collaboration with local festivals ;During all the activities and encounters, these open spaces form meeting and collaborate will be facilitated with dynamics based non-formal education principle, always focusing on group processes rather than short-term results. The project partners will also carry out mediation tasks with key public and private institutions in order to consolidate these spaces and to foster sustainability to the initiatives (individual or collective) incubated during those encounters at local or european levels."

"<< Objectives >>Main objective: to promote intergenerational transmissions in rural areas and to foster rural pride among young peopleSpecific objectives:1. To develop a training program on youth work for heritage organizations2. To involve young people in intergenerational activities to recover the memories of their local communities and territories3. To interpret, illustrate, digitize, map and promote local heritage related to sustainability<< Implementation >>- 5 training courses on youth work for Heritage organizations in Spain, France, Finland and Lithuania- European training encounter in Corsica for young people on the organization of human libraries in rural areas;- Organization of human libraries activities by local young people;- Workshops for young creatives for the reinterpretation and illustration of ""sustainability stories"";- 3 project coordination meetings in Spain, Finland and Lithuania<< Results >>Main results:- a training programme for youth work in the heritage sector- a digital training environment- a methodological guide for the organization of intergenerational human libraries in rural areas- 1 international training course for young organizers of human libraries- local activities and training on heritage education- 15 creative interpretations of local stories related to sustainability- a digital map of rural memories for youth"