Icep is a partner of the Erasmus+ project “Youth Connections -2019-2-UK01-KA205-062270”. The project has a duration of 24 months, starting in November 2019 and ending in October 2021.

Together with the project coordinator Merseyside Expanding Horizons (UK), and partners ANI International (France), ICEP (Slovakia), Aproximar (Portugal) and Active Youth (Lithuania), Promimpresa(Italy) is pursuing the goal of creating strong links between young refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants and EU Youth through creative work and cultural activities in order to foster social inclusion.

Project objectives are:

– To  develop innovative approaches, methodologies, educational contents and inclusive settings useful in fostering dialogue between young Europeans and young resident refugees, asylum seekers and migrants of the same age.

– To train youth workers/trainers multicultural staff, including people from a migrant background, to deliver a more holistic approach culturally sensitive and appropriate to improve the quality of their youth/social work.

– To create innovative non-formal educational pathways to foster social inclusion and dialogue between young Europeans and coetaneous refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.

– To empower young EU citizens and immigrant youth allowing them to be leaders of joint initiatives with transnational visibility aimed at raising awareness of the importance of concrete social inclusion, in the local communities.

– To create a bridge between private organizations and public institutions through the Youth Connections social inclusion programme and Charter, widening their diffusion and strengthening the whole project’s impact. Project Partnership believes that Erasmus+ is an effective instrument to promote the inclusion of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Inclusive education based on specific quality youth work can play a major part in tackling inequalities and on the prevention of marginalization.

The main target groups addressed are:

– Youth Workers

– Young refugees

– EU Youth

– Local stakeholders (associations, schools, public authorities, etc.)

The project sets out to produce the following Intellectual Outputs:

• A Methodological framework, based on innovative action research involving directly target groups from the very beginning of the project.
• A Social inclusion Programme, involving multicultural young teams in creative quality youth work including social events such as: cultural evenings (music, dancing, art), language exchanges, refugee lifeexperience sharing, sports together, etc.
• Multimedia Tools: cross-media web platform; user friendly guide on free tools for creative works involving youth;
• A Youth Connections short documentary film where young participants the project will be the main protagonists.
• The Youth Connections Charter for social inclusion and quality youth work, whose compliant organizations will then be awarded a “Gold Flag” as a symbol that they are compliant with the charter and deliver best practice in their work, fostering social inclusion between young resident refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants and young EU citizens.

Youth Connections Protocol for certification of competencies, used as a guide to validate and certificate the competences of any professional making use of the innovative learning approach developed by this project and of the contents of the training tools developed.