EASTHERN PROJECT LAB.

“Eastern Project Lab” is a training course for potential partners of Youth Exchanges in frame of Erasmus+ Youth programme. This event focuses on development of partnerships and capacity building among youth organisations from Progamme countries, and Eastern Partnership countries for the sake of development Youth Exchange projects in the frames of Youth in Action programme of European Union.

“Eastern Project Lab” is going to be carry out in Kütahya city between the dates are 05-10.02.2018. The project partners will be from Bosnia Herzhegovina, Romania, Georgia, Lithuania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Norway, Albenia, Greece, Bulgaria, United Kingdom, Macedonia, Jordan, Morocco and Turkey. There will be 38 participants from 16 different countries. The project intends to involve youth workers and youth leaders aged between 18 and 30 but without strict age limits.

“Eastern Project Lab” aims to enhance and to support the cooperation between organisations from both regions and in addition wants to stimulate the creation of new projects ideas and development of activities quality.

It’s objectives are:

•To provide information about the Erasmus + Programme in the field of youth and especially Key Action 1- Youth exchanges.
•To create opportunities for building partnerships between Eastern and Western countries within the Erasmus + Programme.
•To develop the necessary knowledge, skills and attitude to organise a successful youth exchange with a special focus on youth participation.
•To bring together Eastern and Western People working with youngsters in order to create new project ideas of youth exchanges within Key Action 1 of the Erasmus + Programme.
•To lead discussion and provide training on project management; time management; risk and conflict management
•To advise on application preparation
•To improve project management and raise project quality.
•To increase understanding of quality demands of the youth exchanges with special attention to active youth participation:
o Equal partnerships and preparation (co-creation of the idea and coownership of the project);
o Quality of project design as a core (youth exchange project management);
o Quality of content and methodology: non-formal learning, intercultural learning, European dimension, active participation;
o Quality of project reach (visibility of the programme and the project, dissemination and exploitation of results, follow-up).

Working methods will be a combination of :

1. Getting-to-know-you activities, reflection and continuous assessment to facilitate group work and to assess learning;
2. Collaborative practice showcase and field visits to share experiences, good practices and ideas in order to conduct a common inquiry into the realities of different countries and contexts;
3. Experience panels and expert presentation of local and international experiences/topics with questions afterwards in plenary;
4. Workshops run by the participants to test methods and tools and to present projects and policies to understand the complexities of youth exchanges in local and international contexts;
5. Plenary sessions connected to the corresponding experiential sessions;
6. Open space to deepen the general knowledge for project building and the creation of networks and partnerships according to areas of interest and fields of work;
7. One2one and evening activities: breaks and evening time to meet, discuss topics and interests and build partnerships to develop new projects and strategies.