Youth unemployment is one of today’s challenges facing the European continent. In wider Europe, the picture of youth unemployment is very diverse and the issue is not only limited to the concerns of national authorities, but also is dominantly present in European discourses vis-à-vis European institutions as well as youth associations and organisations. In the countries of former socialist block, the employability of young people has been influenced severely by a rather rapid shift of the structure of economy from socialist system to capitalism, very often leaving the young people unaware of how to transfer from the large-scale, highly industrial jobs to small scale, and often self-managed jobs in service sector or small scale production based on the assets of own community.Therefore, the consortium wishes to address the economic shift in transformative democracies through boosting creativity and entrepreneurship thinking among young people, enabling them to become an economically active part of the local communities, which is possible to facilitate youth work and non-formal learning as instruments to develop the creative and innovative potential as well as entrepreneurial skills of young people. As a window of opportunity for engaging young people in entrepreneurial activity at the same time activity contributing to the development of own communities and building up on the strength and interests of young people the consortium composed of partners from Armenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia and Ukraine sees the engagement of young people tourism sector, as one of the most rapidly development fields of economy in the countries of project partners. We acknowledge that having limited natural resources, developing human capital and infrastructure for tourism can be an effective instrument for sustainable development for these countries.The aim of “Cities of YOUth: increasing the role of young people in the development of tourism infrastructure” project is to enhance the role and involvement of young people in the build-up of their communities through actively engaging them in the development of tourism infrastructures.To achieve the aim we have identified two specific objectives: • To strengthen the capacity of youth workers in order to support young people to increase their entrepreneurial role and active community engagement through a trainingcourse, modules for coaching, a study visit.• To develop competences and self-esteem of young people to become active stakeholders in the economic development of their communities through 2 exchanges for 50 young people, long-term coaching, business consultancy and implementing business ideas. In the scope of the proposed project we would like to tackle two main aspects of tourism:1. Hospitality service (engaging young people and their households in hosting tourists and visitors) and2. Tour-guiding (creating youth-friendly routs for on foot and by bike trails, organizing tours and developing maps)

This project aims at the validation, recognition and appreciation of the practice of coaching in both international and local youth work. The purpose is to equip youth workers and youth organisations with coaching competences so that they will in turn use them to empower and support young people in goal setting and career guidance. While this project will work internationally to empower and support youth workers into becoming good and efficient coaches according to the international coaching federation standards, it will also give them an opportunity to practice their newly gained competences by establishing coaching services aiming at young people. Therefore each partner in the project will create a local partnership, which, according to the local reality, may include one of from the following not excluding list: University, High School, Educational Institution, Local Authority, TVET Centre, Adult Learning Centres etc. Aiming at a partnership of 3, youth organisation and 2 local bodies.Our partners will provide participants for 3 trainings for coaches. The 1st round of training for coaches will provide participants with basic competences on how to structure and implement a coaching service, while the second round will provide participants with intermediate competences and the third one will provide participants with advanced competences and a coaching certification provided by 2 private entities besides the YouthPass.OBJECTIVES:· To empower youth workers, youth leaders, adult educational professionals with advanced coaching competences.· To establish local pilot programmes aiming at the implementation of the coaching practice and application of the gained competences in reducing unemployment as well as harmonising career choices through goal elicitation.· To create a solution-oriented approach in tackling youth unemployment and thus foster employability and entrepreneurship.· To establish long-term and sustainable coaching practices aiming at developing the competences of local youth towards community leadership, initiators of local projects and activities aiming towards regional development through the promotion of cultural diversity and social inclusion.· To provide international mobility opportunities for both coaching practitioners and final beneficiaries in order to enhance the European dimension of the project and team understanding.· To actively advocate to the relevant local, national and European authorities for the recognition and validation of coaching as a tool and method for working and fostering competence development in young people. There will also be these activities happening in parallel to support the project implementation and accomplishment of its goals:1) Social and Anthropological Research, to assess the situation and state concerning the participants in the international programme, the final local beneficiaries and their communities. The Research will be an ongoing assessment which will provide by the end of the training empirical data concerning the efficacy of coaching.2) Use of modern technologies and approaches will be extensively used in order to promote the goals and activities of this project, by ensuring constant visibility on social media, by disseminating video tutorials and audiovisual production, such as a video documentary on how the project is being implemented, and by writing, drafting and disseminating literature on the topic created by the team.The expected outcomes are the following:- Each of the 5 partners will have 4 internationally trained and certified advanced coaches.- Each coach will assist a minimum of 10 people in career guidance and goal setting, with a minimum outreach of minimum 200 young people.- A minimum of 10 (2 per country) local youth initiatives will be promoted and coached until completion of average each including a minimum of 5 young people, for a total of 100.- A minimum of two partnership per country will be signed and established with public and educational bodies, for a minimum total of 30 local public bodies and authorities involved Europe-wide.- 3 publications / coaching manuals to be compiled and publish.- Minimum 20 video tutorials to be produced.- Minimum 30 interviews with participants of the international training course.- 1 Video documentary shot and edited about how a coaching process functions.- Minimum 20 Non Formal Education tools created and implemented.- Academic anthropological and sociological research on youth needs and the impact of coaching. To be published on a paper.- Presentation of the project outcomes and results to relevant local/regional/national/European authorities in Strasbourg and Brussels.

The project represents a Capacity Building Project, in the field of youth, Eastern Partnership Youth Window projects – Partnership for Entreprenurship.The consortium is formed from six partners Cosvitec Societa Consortile Arl – Italy, Socialas Inovacijas Centrs – Latvia, Asociación de Innovación, Formación y Empleo para el Desarrollo sostenible – Spain, Development center Pangeya Ultima – Ukraine, Gyumri “Youth Initative Centre” – Armenia, International Youth Association Quant – Georgia.The main aim of the project is to raise the capabilities of the partner organisations in providing non-formal training to youngsters that enables them to identify and develop small businesses that make use of the touristic potential of their community.The project specific objectives are:1. Offer non-formal education in the field of tourism entrepreneurship for at least 180 young people from disadvantaged groups from rural and small communities of Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine trough organising non-formal education training workshops at local level in each country;2. Offer young people competences that enable them to use existing digital methods to promote guest houses and small hotels by creating a handbook available in Georgian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Italian, Spanish and English languages that will be distributed to youth at local level in each country and will also be available online;3. Empower 48 young people from rural and marginalised areas of Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Italy, Spain and Latvia to develop sustainable tourism businesses by creating a space where they will share innovative tourism ideas that make use of the potential of their region and create their own business plans in the tourism by organising a 10 days youth exchange that will take place in Telavi, Georgia;4. Foster the cooperation and exchanges and increase the capacity of the partner organisation in the field of entrepreneurial education for youth with a focus on tourism practices that make use of the regional potential;5. Develop innovative non-formal education methodologies and training curricula the field of entrepreneurial tourism for youth tailored to the needs of small rural communities; The methodology will be available in Georgian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Italian, Spanish and English languages.The project activities include: a transnational planning meeting, a research undertaken in Kaheti region Georgia, Shirak region Armenia and Vinnytsia region Ukraine, areas where the project will be implemented, a working meeting to develop non-formal methodologies of youth entrepreneurship in tourism, a youth exchange where youngsters will create innovative tourism business ideas that make use or their region potential, creation of a guide with advices related on ways to promote small hostel/guest houses on web platforms at international level, dissemination events at local level and an evaluation meeting.

"After gaining independence Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have started developing open society and building a democratic state. Since democratic society implies basic principles such as pluralism and prohibition of discrimination, struggle for equality and human rights have been brought to a public discourse. Throughout the last decade we have witnessed an increasing trend of polarization in Caucasus and Europe. Higher incidences of violent extremism hate crime and hostility towards different groups especially manifested through hate speech are becoming worryingly frequent in everyday lives. Several reports pointed the rise of violent extremism (Amnesty International ¨Annual Report 2016-2017”, Human Rights Watch ¨World Report 2017¨). In 2010s multiple international and civil society organisations have reported higher incidences of anti-western propaganda, which attacks the liberal values that underpin human rights. The strongest anti-western narratives try to convince the audiences that the Western World is imposing policies and values incompatible with the national traditions and values. Through this approach, especially the rights of LGBTQI community are being under a constant attack, together with efforts for promoting gender equality, rights of ethnic and religious minorities and the creators of these narratives systematically incite hatred and encourage nationalism, prejudices and discrimination, and also undermine other fundamental human rights. Due to the unconsolidated media environment of Caucasus, these dangerous messages spread among wide public and combating them requires not only constantly debunking specific cases of disinformation and fake news, but mainly systematic education of the population. Freedom House report ""Nations in Transit 2017"" has alarming findings regarding central and eastern Europe – more than a half of the countries in the report have declined in their Democracy Scores. With its second focal point, this project identifies human rights education and education for democratic citizenship (EDC/HRE) as one of the key tools to develop critical consciousness and empower society against propaganda. “Human rights education - helps to develop the communication skills and informed critical thinking essential to a democracy. It examines human rights issues without bias and from diverse perspectives through a variety of educational practices” (Human Rights Here and Now: Celebrating the UDHR, ed. Nancy Flowers (Minneapolis: Human Rights Educators’ Network, Amnesty International USA, 1998). The project used Council of Europe materials (Bookmarks, We CAN!) to create a know-how on taking action against violent extremism, hate speech, anti-western propaganda through human rights education, education for democratic citizenship, media education and literacy and counter and alternative narratives.Project aimed to develop media literacy and critical consciousness of youth in Caucasus through advocating EDC/HRE and confront narratives discrediting the concept of liberal democracy, rule of law, human rights;Objectives:To train the fellows in EDC/HRE and media education;To create educational opportunities for young people in EDC/HRE and increase their participation in civil society;To create the practice of using counter and alternative narratives with young people to discredit propaganda and hate speech;To make Council of Europe educational tools more accessible and disseminate it with civil society organizations;To create practices of counter and alternative narratives against propaganda and hate speech and disseminate it in international and regional civil society organisations;To promote and advocate for EDC/HRE European Charter and to create cross-sector and multi-level cooperation opportunitie"

Our project is a multi-stage fellowship programme which is aimed at enhancing skills and competences of people from youth organisations from Eastern Partnership and Programme countries in social impact measurement. It would help organisations to increase their effectiveness in achieving their goals and organise effective work with their end users and other stakeholders.Our objectives are:- to organise transfer of the experience and knowledge between Programme countries and Eastern partnership countries;- to increase capacity of organisations working with youth with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills on the social impact measurement;- to spread experience on the local level in 7 countries through developing projects aimed at sharing their knowledge with their peers in youth work;- to summarise project results and organised their dissemination on the international level.All the partner organisations are organisations working with young people. Their fields of interests and activities include promoting programmes aimed at youth participation, active citizenship, youth development, leadership, empowerment, cooperation on the local level, and policy dialogue.Our UK partner carries the know-how on measuring social impact, and the rest of participants are highly motivated to learn the competency and apply it in their organisations for the benefit of the communities. This makes us an effective consortium for the delivery of this project.The group of 21 youth workers from 4 Eastern Partnership countries (Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) and Programme Countries (Portugal, Macedonia and Poland) will:1) Take part in 2 training courses about understanding and using social impact approaches;2) Conduct researches of the implementation of the social impact in their organisations;3) Conduct local initiatives aimed at sharing their knowledge with their peers in youth work;5) Take part in the final conference with the aim to evaluate the whole project results, share the experience of the local projects, share the new experiences and plan the follow up activities;6) Design and disseminate manual with the project results.The duration of the project is 17 month.