HIDDEN DIMENSIONS OF INCLUSION IN THE YOUTH SECTOR

Background The ‘Hidden Dimensions of Inclusion in the Youth Sector’ project was an international collaboration of three civil society organizations from Eastern-Europe engaged in education, social work and/or advocacy. Együttható has a wide range of experience/expertise of involvement young people living with disabilities into local and international actions/learning experiences. Inclusion of young people living with disabilities is a main horizontal objective of our daily work, promoting the Independent Living Movement and empowering young people to be active citizens along the way. Young people living with disabilities are often deprived of community activities and less willing to mobilise which affects their social status and environment on the long run. Educational institutions are trying to integrate these young people with limited success, limitations being inflexible pedagogic framework, lack of qualified experts and lack of proper and barrier-free environment. Thus, youth work seems to be an adequate tool for fostering social inclusion and active citizenship of people living with disabilities. However, accessibility of mobility schemes and youth NGOs in general are limited. Objectives Our project aimed to • find the answer by conducting an empirical research and formulating policy recommendations • focus on assessing barriers in existing youth work infrastructures – defining barriers as wide as possible • gathers data and knowledge from professionals working within the field. Implementation During the project we -Organized 9 transnational meetings, 5 of them being online -Developed our research plan as intellectual output 1 -Developed Intellectual output 2 – analysis of almost 250 responses to our questionnaire, 58 in-depth interviews, focus groups and documentum analysis in 3 countries, studies published in national language and English -Developed Intellectual output 3 – policy recommendations in national languages and english -Organized 3 Conferences in Hungary, Greece and Romania -Developed a website to share all results at https://egyutthato.eu/hidden/# The project resulted in the studies and recommendations listed, available on the website of the project. Furthermore, the project initiated valuable discussion and initiatives on the topic, shedding light on the discrepancies between policy and practical implementation of the inclusion strategies of Erasmus+ programme. Achievements Based on the studies, experts involved in developing the policy recommendations and of disabled persons, we can highlight the following key conclusions: It is necessary to ensure higher budgeting in international youth programs, in order to incentivize E+ applicant organizations to think about inclusion. Applicants awarded with E+ grants should participate in a mandatory inclusion training regularly. The training should provide knowledge on the philosophy of independent living and basic knowledge and elements in the fields of disability studies, special pedagogy, social work. Based on our research results, further resources are to be allocated to make youth work accessible in all three participated countries, as current efforts are highly insufficient in both local and international dimensions. Higher efforts are needed from policy level as well; while communication is already strongly inclusive, enforcement of programme-level policies is lacking in terms of budgeting, mandatory steps in inclusion or strong incentivisation of inclusive projects through awarding substantial extra point during project evaluation processes. The project managed to achieve all its objectives and published the results.