"The ""YOUTH & DEVELOPMENT 4ALL"" project was a strategic partnership in the field of education, training and youth, funded by the Erasmus + Youth in Action program, which involved three countries - Portugal, Spain and Italy. This project provided the development of an attractive training and sharing program of good practices for youth technicians, using methods of non-formal education and peer learning, which allowed for direct contact and collaboration among different people and entities, the development of language skills and knowledge of methodologies and good practices in working with young people. Beyond the process of training of participants and organizations, the project resulted in a guide to support youth technicians, which includes methodologies and resources to support youth intervention in different fields, entrepreneurship, and social inclusion of young people.The project, developed in an action-research perspective, with a duration of 16 months, directly promoted the training of 30 technicians, through the development of learning processes, knowledge and practices in the field of social inclusion, entrepreneurship and methodologies of non-formal education. This knowledge was after presented to young people in the context of awareness-raising / information activities, in which they were sensitized to the importance of promoting their personal and social skills, namely the multilinguistic level and the spirit of initiative, creativity and entrepreneurship, as elements of preparation and integration in the labor market.This project contributed to the training of the participants involved, as well as to the internationalization of the organizations involved in the partnership, but also of the organizations that made technicians available to participate in the training process."

BACKGROUND/CONTEXTIn the last decades, European policies enabling the European Social Model, supported by EU Structural Funds (ERDF, CF, ESF), managed to increase cohesion among EU countries, whilst internal asymmetries are more and more evident (Giddens, 2006). Young people are at the very center of the process: overall, their mobility-related choices result in a phenomenon known as drain brain, due to the attractivity of urban/metropolitan areas with respect to inner ones in terms of access to services, quality of life and job opportunities. In Portugal, the divide is particularly visible: 70% of the population lives by the coast (0-50km), as made evident by the two metropolitan areas of the nation, Lisbon and Porto, which account together for almost half of the national population (45% of Continental Portugal, around 4.8 million). ANIMAR, fearing how a lack of generational turnover in marginal areas would negatively affect the capacity of the social economy to support local development, is willing to build a cross-sectoral partnership aiming to elaborate a common strategy with international actors who share the same vision.This is an open call for public institutions and private organizations either working with sustainable tourism, job creation, or youth participation and training: local and regional authorities, schools and universities; networks of NGOs and youth organizations; social enterprises and cooperatives; businesses related to tourism and territorial promotion.VISIONLocal development needs time to prove its impacts and must therefore be attractive in order to regenerate its forces: in concrete, we need to create opportunities for young people to stay in low-density areas. The intuition is to take advantage of two trends of the youth contemporary world: on the one hand, young people have been nourishing a new sensibility, proving their willingness to be actors of positive change toward a more sustainable, inclusive and responsible way of living; on the other hand, eased access to mobility is making it one of the most attractive and effective educational and learning tool. As a consequence, we aim to re-imagine mobility from a drain-braining escape to an experience of connection and exchange, promoting the value of solidarity as a driver of our actions and fostering the transition from individualism to cooperation. What we propose as a solution is thus Solidarity Tourism, able to merge the experiential attractivity of mobility with the inner responsibility toward our common home, where nobody is nowhere left behind. Lastly, the internationalization achieved through solidarity tourism will represent an enrichment for local communities in terms of openness and European values, raising awareness on sustainable living and developing EU citizenship. NEEDS AND TARGETThe overall challenge is to elaborate a virtuous and scalable solution able to fight brain drain by exploiting a new kind of mobility: solidarity tourism. Consequently, while the final beneficiary is youth, the target of the project are youth workers, either belonging to the public sector or to social economy organizations. Their need is to elaborate a methodology in order to attract and empower young people with key competences enabling them to engage with their territory. Our proposal focuses on solidarity tourism, meant as an opportunity to create youth commitment and active participation at local level.RESULTS, DISSEMINATION AND IMPACTS

"<< Background >>Next generations have a key role to play in the creation of a more sustainable, equitable and fair future. At the same time, the youngsters are suffering from diverse constraints due to previous crises that have been increasing in consequence of the pandemic, and are already claiming for changes on public policies, practices and everyday choices of human beings. However, the needed paradigm change requires the change of consciousness, a new work mind-set and skills development. This is why a project designed by and for young people with the objective of providing them with the means and spaces to empower them, is fundamental.This project arises from the hand of a group of young people from different organisations that began to meet in September 2020 after the General Assembly of RIPESS, which established the need and desire to build a joint project by and for young people under the main idea that “Young people lack Social Solidarity Economy, and above all, that Social Solidarity Economy lacks young people”. We firmly believe that the new generations have a key role to play in building the future, and we claim that the majority of young people feel interested by the principles of the SSE and that they want their actions to have a positive impact on the community and the environment.In order to choose the theme of the project and its objectives, the group decided that it would have to be done jointly, by consensus and listening to the concerns of the young population in general. In this way, from the beginning, we rejected the idea of formulating a project based on the particular interests of our organisations, since the aim is not to ""assist"" young people in a paternalistic way, but to make them an active part of the whole process. That is why, on January 27, 2021, in the framework of the World Social Forum, we presented the activity: ""Setting the trends in activism for the economic transition"". The activity was an open assembly, a space to explore, advocate and lobby for an economic transition. Listening to the majority of the group, we understood that one of the needs of the young people was to learn more about Ethical Finance and local currencies so that savings and money flows would be related to social projects and not to speculation. But above all, through this event it became clear that a paradigm change is needed and that young people have a lot to contribute and need to be heard.In this sense, our proposal will fundamentally contribute to the achievement of priorities such as promoting active citizenship, recognition of youth work and initiatives and will advocate to provide young people with the necessary tools to empower themselves and build fairer and more egalitarian societies.<< Objectives >>This project aims, on the one hand, to promote ethical and solidarity finances, especially in the European Mediterranean region, to raise awareness among young people of the importance of keeping their savings in entities that invest in social and environmental projects rather than in armaments or a speculative economy and to promote active advocacy actions leb by youngsters. All this will lead to achieving the main objective of this project: to have a group of empowered young people. In other words, Ethical Finance is understood as a way to empower other people and to empower ourselves and our communities.Thus, a kind of bridge will be created between youth activism and Ethical Finance, leveling up youth socio-political (advocating for a finance benefiting communities) and socio-economic (beyond conscious consumption, making a difference with savings) empowerment.The project’s goal is to raise awareness among youngsters in European countries about Ethical Finance and foster ties between groups of young people who want to invest and participate in social projects.The specific objectives are:- To increase active citizenship and young people’s sense of initiative.- To increase the level of knowledge on Ethical Finance within the young people.- To increase the engagement of young people, in local, regional and international advocacy activities.- To increase the use of non-formal education methods and promote open digital tools.The project will empower and connect young people who want to have their say and take action in the realm of Economic Justice. This first youth unit is meant to be the core of the Youth Solidarity Economy Network, a permanent youth informal group promoting activism in Ethical Finance, sharing knowledge and practices, as well as co-creating opportunities to take action.This project was designed by young people and will be led by young people.<< Implementation >>Following the project proposal as well as regarding the objectives settled, the project develops:1) Project Results: Taking into account the reflections derived from the open activity held at the World Social Forum, we understood the need for concrete and well-structured information materials on Ethical Finance for youngsters. All this in link with the main idea that young people could be an active participant and voice in social change through solidarity, fair and ethical resources and practices regarding monetary issues. In such a way, the partnership proposed to develop a training program aimed at young people who want to learn more about Ethical and Solidarity Finance and who are interested in organising themselves for activism and transformation. This training program will be made freely available to individuals, but also to youth-led organisations and organisations working in the field of youth that want to take advantage of the training program in their work with young people.2) Learning and Training activities: Training is a strong tool to involve and to access information and knowledge as we can see by the successful implementation in previous European projects. For that, we implement a pilot training to test and validate the contents and the structure of the Training in Action on Ethical Finance (PR1), involving 15 young people from the partners’ countries and invited guests from the local community, in order to provide the participants with local initiatives, being in that sense a training-in-action activity. The idea is to have an opportunity to come into contact with a rich reality on Ethical Finance, that is why we choose Barcelona as the city to implement the pilot training.3) National multiplier events (Open-Days) and European Seminar in order to disseminate the PR1. We will organise different events that will mobilise relevant national stakeholders such as SSE organisations, Ethical Finance stakeholders and institutions, young people, youth-led organisations, umbrella organisations/networks, policy/decision makers.<< Results >>The project foresees outcomes and outputs.About the outputs, the PR - Training-in-Action on Ethical Finance and International Youth-led Campaign - to be created, piloted and implemented during the project will constitute free access tools to enhance the outcomes presented below and will be used by young people, activists, youth-led organisations and organisations working in the field of youth during the project and after its completion. The outcomes during the project are as follows:- Increased sense of active citizenship among young people.- Increased sense of initiative within young people.- Increased knowledge of Ethical Finance within the young people.- Increased engagement of young people, in local, regional and international advocacy activities.- Increased use of non-formal education methods by young people, activists, youth-led organisations and organisations working in the field of youth. Additional outcomes will be:- Enhanced opportunities for collaborative work in future projects;- Enhanced advocacy skills;- Increased involvement in European networks;- Enhanced linkages between Ethical Finance organisations and young people;- Increased visibility of Ethical Finance action and role on social change;- Increased connection with local realities by young people;- Increased awareness of Ethical Finance as a response to contemporary development challenges. The project’s outcomes on its completion are as follows:- Young people, activists, youth-led organisations and organisations working in the field of youth will realize the utility of the tools created in the project (PR) and adopt the methodologies piloted in their activities.- Daily practices from young people, activists, youth-led organisations and organisations working in the field of youth will be more aligned with alternative and more sustainable economic cycles.- Youth stakeholders will implement future practices aligned with alternative economic cycles. As transversal results we can also point out the following:- Increased knowledge and experience of the staff involved in the project (specifically in terms of Ethical Finance and youth activism, and more generally in terms of communicating in different languages and with people from different cultural environments);- Enhanced cooperation at national and European levels;- Enhanced Erasmus+ visibility and projection among national and European stakeholders as a relevant funding partner for European cooperation."