CHALLENGED partnership involves partners from Lithuania, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania. Please find the partners’ descriptions below.
VšĮ Inovacijų biuras / Innovation Office (Lithuania) – Coordinator
VsI Inovaciju biuras (Innovation Office) creates a supportive environment for people’s activity, creativity and innovations.
Although Innovation Office’s main focus is on creativity and entrepreneurship, however, organization encourages people to be active in many fields as innovations could be grown only if a person has an open mind and has a broad point of view, especially it is important not only in regular business but also in social entrepreneurship.
Innovation Office acting as Incubator for Good Ideas supports youth entrepreneurship, runs such long-term projects as Online Youth Newspaper Youthexpress.eu, database of scholarly articles ScholarArticles.net, social business Relative Art (www.artimasmenas.lt). Other projects of good ideas are under the developing stage. Here in the incubator, young people
are working on their joint business ideas, personal projects and implement them. In this case, they are learning by doing. The organization works with youth, encouraging them to try new things and gain real experience through internship or volunteering.
We are highly focused on social inclusion: in our activities participants are youth who are blind or visual impaired, deaf or having hearing disabilities, having special educational needs, also participants are from all over Lithuania, including rural areas.
Innovation Office encourages people to make changes step-by-step, in order to grow innovations inside themselves.
Academy for Active Youth Association (Bulgaria)
The fundamental idea of Academy for active youth is based on the principle ‘By Young People For Young People’. What we promote can be summed in one sentence which is: The responsibility for the future is in the hands of us- the youth, and we train the youth to become the ambassadors of a more sustainable society. We support the integration of vulnerable youth groups from our society- unemployed youth, youth with health problems, youth with fewer opportunities, students and pupils, youth with fewer opportunities, youth from the minorities, unemployed youth, youth with fewer educational opportunities. The interesting thing for us is that we are all youth ourselves, some of us are just 18 (the oldest one of us is 23). Our association is mainly run by volunteers who are in many various spheres of development.
The organization works on the development of youth politics and the active involvement of youth activities in daily social life. Academy for active youth aims to be a mediator between the youth and the power of representation. Our long term goal is to create an active young society of youngsters that know what it takes to make a change for youth voices to be heard and for more opportunities for the most vulnerable youth. Because only the young are the ones that are allowed to be idealistic by striving for a better world, and most importantly that know that it is never too early to start and you are never too young to make a change happen.
The causes that we keep close to our hearts are more youth into agriculture, more developed rural areas, thanks to the youth, youth in entrepreneurship, youth in politics, and youth in education. We consider that it is the youth who brings the new, therefore we feel the need to give our best to prepare the foundations of active youth society in Bulgaria and in Europe.
The organization was founded on 17.12.2019. Some of us have always worked in the youth sector for different NGO’s, others in the arts and culture, third in the development of youth politics, fourth of us are dealing professionally with digital media and technology, others with entrepreneurship, agricultural and rural development. We are all united by the idea of the fact that peers have the biggest power to influence other peers. That is why we work on setting an example of active and proactive youth, that doesn’t blame the world for their problems, but seeks ways to improve them. Informal education and its promotion is a huge part of what we believe in. We know that informal education can develop the personal qualities of the youngsters for them one day to be young leaders and developers. Our main interests are working on involving young people in politics, social entrepreneurship, agriculture, self-development, and intercultural experiences and with these qualifications and inspirations to set an example from young people to other young people.
We are focused on providing international experiences (such as YE, training courses, EVS) for youngsters with fewer opportunities that are going to develop their competencies and new skills, as well as boosting their confidence and self-discovery. We develop various trainings, seminars, and workshops in order to develop a dialogue at the eye level with youngsters from all kinds of backgrounds and who are not only our target group but are the main protagonists in the process.
International Institute of Applied Psychology and Human Sciences associazione culturale (Italy)
International Institute of Applied Psychology and Human Sciences is a cultural and scientific association located in Italy. The goals of IIAPHS are
1. to promote scientific research in the field of psychology, also in cooperation with Scientific Entities and Organisations both public and private, national and international
2. To collect and elaborate data, to structure and implement psychological intervention and to disseminate information regarding applied psychology and human sciences
3. to divulge the methodology of scientific research, psychology and human sciences
4. to facilitate critical knowledge and learning of Applied Psychology
5. to promote and organize training courses, seminars, congresses, workshop, conferences about Applied Psychology and Human Sciences;
6. to promote psychological knowledge in other professions, facilitating the multidisciplinarity
7. to manage and implement European projects
IIAPHS is involved in the participation of EU-Projects in several fields of intervention related to applied psychology and human sciences including bullying, cyberbullying, prevention of violence, communication of bad news, school psychology, child protection, fake news detection, psychology of tourism, work and organisational psychology, psychology of disability and sexology.
Experts of IIAPHS had more than 1000 associates in 2019 and worked especially in:
1. The organization and implementation Training Courses of Applied Psychology
2. the organization and implementation of International Conferences with experts from Europe, America and Africa
3. The design and management of EU-Projects. IIAPHS experts are currently managing 17 Erasmus projects.
IIAPHS has a total dissemination impact on 50000 users of the newsletter, constantly updated on the progress of the project and it is the owner of the Facebook Page “Psicologia” with 36000 users.
Fundacja Kopalnia Inicjatyw (Poland)
Initiatives Mine Foundation is non-governmental, non-profit institution. Established in February 2014. It is located in Silesian province of Poland. All activities of the Foundation are
focused on the education of youth and voluntarism. The main aim is to support different groups and institutions using non-formal methods of learning and connect them with formal education.
Associacao Para A Educacao De Segunda Oportunidade (Portugal)
AE2O is a non profit, non governmental organization, whose aim is to promote second chance education, working especially with disfavoured young people with low qualifications, unemployed and at risk of social exclusion. Its main activity is to run Escola de Segunda Oportunidade de Matosinhos, a pilot project that started in 2008, the only second chance school in the country, member of the European network of second chance schools (E2C-Europe). The school targets 15 to 25 year olds who have left school without finishing their basic education due to social and emotional difficulties that impeded their continuing engagement in formal learning. Often the circumstances behind this related to the negative view of their families with respect to their experiences of education, due to difficult family experiences related to unemployment, poverty, alcohol and drug misuse, etc. All the young people in the school are themselves vulnerable as a result of the unfortunate cycle of their poor educational standing impacting on their aspirations for their futures. They have been prey to teenage pregnancies and substance abuse and continue to live in poor conditions. In summary, their situation is due to many social, economical, personal and educational reasons that constitute the context of these vulnerable young people’s lives.
Many students are referred through “court support teams” for young offenders, and others come through social services, mainstream schools and in general word of mouth peer-topeer information.
The school has 70 student places lasting one year, which can begin at any point in the year. Building up a portfolio of work leads to certification equivalent to the sixth or ninth year of school. The school’s follows a holistic pedagogical approach through a “dynamic connection and combination between subjects”. The students develop their own Individual Training
Plans, combining vocational, artistic, school and personal and social skills. Personal and social education is taught in a cross cutting way through different media, in response to issues that arise within a group, individual or family setting. Parental education is provided also for parents asking for help with different issues such as benefits, food and jobs. The school
offers a positive environment and an arts based curriculum which attracts the attendance of these young people and encourages their learning, engaging with the realities of their lives accepting them as human beings with a potential to be developed.
AE2O develops also other activities of training, exchange and spreading of experiences and is certified by national agency DGERT as the accredited training provider.
Asociatia ,,Association Colour Your Dreams” (Romania)
Colour Your Dreams Association has been created in 2016 and it’s operating in Targu Jiu, Gorj County, Romania. It is based on the experience of founding members and active staff to work with children and young people with fewer opportunities, with a special focus on children and young people with disabilities who come from rural, low-income families, subject to social exclusion. The founding members are also involved actively as psycho-pedagogical teachers from more than 20 years in the School Center for Inclusive Education in Targu Jiu.
Moreover, they were trained in national and international contexts on topics related to educational counselling, career guidance, educational and organizational management, interpreters in sign language, trainers, inclusive education, European citizenship, active citizenship, training of trainers, methodologies and working tools for young people, antidiscrimination and approaches in working with young people with mixed abilities (integration of young people with disabilities in the community with young people without disabilities), human rights, education of parents of children with disabilities.
Therefore, the association is purposely built around the need to contribute towards the facilitation of inclusion of youth with disabilities, having an integrated approach by targeting capacity building at the level of youth workers, youth and community stakeholders, such as parents, teachers, but also NGOs and public authorities. The association is also a founding member
of the County Youth Foundation from Gorj, Romania, aimed at providing youth in Gorj county with constant opportunities for personal and professional development.
The association has signed over 40 partnerships with several institutions, schools and NGOs to meet the organization’s goals. One of the most important is the one with the Direction of Sports and Youth Gorj County, which does not have members, carrying out all the activities of its Youth Center. In all activities, it collaborated with over 1,500 young people from the
community.
