The project

REBUILD is an Erasmus+ project financed by EACEA (Key Action 3 – European Youth Together), and is aimed at fostering youth civic participation after the COVID19 pandemic by creating opportunities for networking, mobilities, capacity building and tailored project design training.

The project responds to the challenges faced by youth communities all over Europe especially as the pandemic hit our world, with particular attention to those groups of young people who are most at risk of social marginalisation, or who have found themselves even more marginalised as a result of the pandemic.

Social exclusion among the youth can take many forms and has shown to have a variety of negative impacts on their mental, social and professional wellbeing. More and more young people - as a result of forced home isolation, fewer opportunities of networking and human relationships, and fear for the safety of loved ones – found themselves in a condition of hopelessness.

Yet, we believe that amidst this general sense of loss, young communities across Europe have once again proven their resilience and ability to create and develop even at times of despair. Young people have gathered to support their communities through actions of social solidarity. Actions which are more than ever needed today.

Our Objectives

Young people haven’t lost hope at a time of widespread fear and pessimism. We want to learn from youth organisations – both formal and informal – which have continued to implement initiatives of social and environmental solidarity despite the challenges of COVID19.

This means that we will:

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Listen to them through guided conversations and promote their efforts and activities in a collection of Webzines (i.e. web magazines) to celebrate their resilience, and through the project campaign and local assemblies.

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put them in touch with each other because we believe dialogue and cross-border exchange are key pre-requisites for human and professional development, through online and in-person

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Support them to connect with the other youth organisations’ representatives establishing youth networks in each partner country, who will act as Youth Ambassadors for under-represented young people in their communities.

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Develop free workshops on capacity building and project design, after which they will be given the financial and professional support to implement their project ideas over 4 months.

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Produce a Strategy Paper representing the voices of our youth with their active participation to deliver to key European youth stakeholders during the final International Youth Summit in Brussels

Activities

Step 1

  • Guided conversations with representatives of youth organisations to learn about their initiatives on social and environmental solidarity
  • 2 local roundtables in 6 countries during which youth representatives exchange their experience and aimed at the establishment of local youth networks of future Ambassadors of under-represented young people
  • An International Youth-net Forum in Palermo (Italy) with the participation of partners and youth representatives to create the transnational REBUILD Network

Step 2

  • Delivery of 8 workshops with 28 under-represented young people in each partner country on capacity building and project design
  • After the training, young people will be divided in teams and implement their project ideas over 4 months

Step 3

  • National contests in each partner country will vote the best project idea, whose team will travel to Brussels during the International Summit at the end of the project
  • Online thematic fora for transnational exchange among youth ambassadors

Step 4

  • Consultations with 2 policy makers in the field of youth in each partner country
  • Development of the REBUILD Strategy Paper containing evidence-based policy recommendations about lessons learnt from Youth teams’ experiences
  • International Youth Summit in Brussels to promote the youth networks and raise awareness among youth stakeholders at EU level