Call for Proposals - EACEA/17/11: �Youth in Action� programme: Youth Support Systems - Sub-action 4.3: Enhancing youth workers� learning mobility and youth work support to unemployed young people

The purpose of this call is to support youth workers’ mobility and exchanges with a view to promoting the acquisition of new skills and competences in order to enrich their profile as professionals in the youth field. By promoting long-term transnational learning experiences for youth workers, this new action will also aim at strengthening the capacities of the structures involved in the project, which will benefit from the experience and new perspective brought by a youth worker from a different background. In doing so, this call will enhance networking among youth structures in Europe and will contribute to the policy priority to support, recognise and professionalise youth work as a cross-cutting policy tool in Europe.

This call will also contribute to encouraging the development of innovative approaches or methods through which youth workers can support unemployed young people in gaining the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence to enter the labour market.

This call provides grants to support projects aimed at meeting the following objectives:

- to give youth workers the opportunity to experience a different working reality in another country,
- to gain a better understanding of the European dimension of youth work,
- to improve youth workers’ professional, intercultural and language competences,
- to promote the exchange of experiences and approaches to youth work and non-formal education in Europe,
- to contribute to develop stronger and better quality partnerships between youth organisations across Europe, and
- to strengthen the quality and the role of youth work in Europe

Preference will be given to those projects which best reflect the permanent priorities of the ‘Youth in Action’ programme:
— participation of young people,
— cultural diversity,
— European citizenship,
— inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities.

Preference will also be given to projects reflecting the following annual priority:
— youth unemployment.

This priority is intended to encourage projects promoting the access of unemployed young people to the ‘Youth in Action’ programme.

Priority will also be given to projects tackling the issues of youth unemployment and/or aimed at stimulating unemployed young people's mobility and active participation in society.

Proposals must be submitted by non-profit organisations. These organisations can be:
- non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
- bodies active at European level in the field of youth (ENGO), which have member organisations in at least eight programme countries of the ‘Youth in Action’ programme
- public bodies based at regional or local level.

This applies to both applicant and partner organisations. Applicants must have been legally registered for at least two years in one of the programme countries: the 27 EU Member States, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, Turkey.

Projects should be based on a partnership between two partners from two different programme countries of which at least one is an EU Member State, acting respectively as sending and host organisation of the youth worker(s) involved in the project. One of the two partners will assume the role of coordinating organisation and apply to the Executive Agency for the whole project on behalf of both.

Persons from overseas countries and territories and, if applicable, public or private institutions based there, are eligible under the ‘Youth in Action’ programme, depending upon the rules of the programme and those which apply in the Member State with which they are connected.
The project must include activities of a non-profit-making nature that are related to the field of youth and non-formal education.
Projects must start between 1 January 2012 and 1 June 2012.

Projects will have a maximum duration of 12 months. The duration will be a minimum of two months and a maximum of six months.

Participants in the proposals submitted under this call must be professional youth workers legally resident in one of the ‘Youth in Action’ programme countries. Both paid employees and experienced volunteers working in non-governmental organisations or local or regional public bodies active in the field of youth are concerned. There is no age limit of the participants.

In order to ensure the maximum benefits from the learning mobility experience both for the individual participant(s) and their sending and host organisations, a minimum of two years of relevant and documented professional experience in the field of youth work is required. Youth workers must have a clear, regular, structured and stable cooperation with their sending organisation. They must be identified in the application form.

Projects will support individual mobility of up to two youth workers. When two youth workers are involved the project must be based on the principle of reciprocity, i.e. there should be a mutual exchange of youth workers between the two partner organisations. This will also allow partners to maintain stability in their human resources.

Youth workers engaged on a voluntary basis should provide proof that they have a solid connection as well as a regular, structured and long-term cooperation with their sending organisation.

This call is not targeted at young volunteers occasionally working in a youth organisation or public body.

The total budget allocated to the co-financing of projects under this call is estimated at €1 million. The maximum grant will be €25,000.

The deadline for applications is 1 September 2011.

Further information is available on the EACEA website

Reference: 2011/C 165/09

(Added 2011-06-07)