Enriching and increasing fundraising for youth work on inclusion

This project had so many interested partners willing to join it, that we had to apply for it twice. This is the second part of it and this part/project gathers organisations from Western Balkans and partners interested more in cooperation with Western Balkans (The first part of this project gathered only other partners from programme countries).

All our organisations base their work on projects and related project based funding. In most cases those projects cannot cover regular costs of organisational staff, facilities and utilities; and all the potential team building activities for / with our volunteers and staff. Also, if we do not get funding for specific project related to the real needs in our community, we do not have resources to organise activities in that direction. Nowadays, there is a huge competition between civil society organisations for funding on tenders organised and quite often it happens that even if the project is well developed and written and there are real urgent needs for such project in community, still projects do not get funding as there are just not enough financial resources available.

With this project, we tried to respond to these needs of our partner organisations (and other interested civil society organisations) through capacity building of theirs by exploring other sources of funding and empowering and encouraging our youth workers for taking actions and enriching their sources of funding for their work with marginalised groups and better impact on inclusion and acceptance of diversity in society.

Objectives of the project were:
– To allow for exchange of practices among youth workers from different countries/communities on various aspects and perceptions of marginalisation and inclusion, different insights and perceptions about youth work with marginalised groups and values in those work
– To motivate and empower youth workers for active promotion of combating social exclusion in their activities by respecting values and principles of European youth work for inclusion/diversity and proposed solutions and recommendations for challenges in their project management and fundraising
– To empower youth workers and inspire their innovation and creativity in fundraising and grant application writing for working with marginalised groups, and thus through their work encourage quality exchange between mainstream young people and the ones from marginalised groups
– To explore different possible sources of funding for youth work on inclusion (available and through different offline and online tools) and inspire potential approaches of our organisations partners towards possible donours that they have not approached before this project
– To empower youth workers in understanding and using Erasmus+ and other EU Programmes for their youth work for inclusion and developing their skills in grant application writing for working with marginalised groups within the programmes
– To develop more projects and activities, on local level and within the Erasmus+ and other EU programmes, that are aimed at raising young people’s awareness of everyone’s responsibility in tackling discrimination and marginalisation as well as at promoting the acceptance of diversity and inclusion of groups with fewer opportunities.

The core activity of the project was the 8 days long training course. It was be organised in Mali Idjos, Serbia in April 2018. Project gathered 28 participants, trainers and staff from 9 organisations from 9 countries (DE, RS, HR, IT, MK, BA, ME, XK and SE). It involved 12 out of 28 people with fewer opportunities.

The training course was based on the approach and principles of non-formal education and is designed as an open learning process based on participants’ experience and exchange. A combination of different creative, participatory and interactive methods were used and designed upon the profile of participants.

All partners were be involved in preparation, implementation and evaluation and follow-up phase and activities during the project, while the preparation team of trainers, facilitators and staff was comprised of experienced youth trainers and youth workers from applicant and partners from Germany, Serbia and Croatia.

Results are that youth workers acquired more practical as well as theoretical tools and skills to better do quality fundraising from different sources and online tools. Partners entered new European level partnerships and will start using more different EU funding programmes than what they were using until then.

In longer term, this will result with increase of quality programmes and activities with marginalised groups and better inclusion and acceptance in society, on local and European level.