The book of life: Write your own bestseller!

Background The "The book of Life - Write your own bestseller" project was a strategic partnership project that aimed to achieve transnational and cross-sectoral cooperation in order to the development, testing and implementation of some innovative non-formal methods of working with young people, through combined expressive techniques, in order to increase their involvement in the life of the community, to motivate them to become the architects of their own lives and to teach them how to gain independence in order to build a healthy lifestyle, from a personal and social point of view professional. The main problem that started the development of this project was the very late launching of young people in their independent life. During this launching they have more and more problems related to the incidence of unemployment (15.2%), professional frustrations and re professionalization after the age of 30, the incidence of anxiety disorders and depression among young people (declared by the WHO as up to in 2020 it became the first cause of disabling diseases, the percentage among young people being on the rise - 27%) and the negative influence on the development of the family plan (increasing the age of marriage, belonging to the first child). Objectives Through the implementation of this project, we achieved: - Increasing the capacity of young people (a group of at least 320 young people from 5 countries) to plan and implement a healthy lifestyle (physical, mental, emotional and relational) through the use of innovative expressive tools, in the process of personal and professional development. - Increasing the quality of non-formal activities in the field of youth, by developing, testing and disseminating a personal and professional development toolkit for young people, such as and an integrated intervention program that youth workers can use to develop the decision-making capacity for the independent life of young people. - Increasing the organizational capacity of 5 European youth organizations, to use non-formal tools focused on the personal development of young people and to develop sustainable work methodologies in the field of youth, for the return after the pandemic period. Implementation The activities we implemented during The Book of Life: Writing your own bestseller project were: - 4 transnational project meetings - elaboration of one intellectual output - The Book of Life Toolkit containing 3 publications and one website. This intellectual output is addressed to both young people and youth workers and it was tested with some workshops on 320 youngsters from the 5 partner countries - learning, teaching, training activity with 20 youth workers, in Beja, Portugal - 5 local multiplier events in the 5 partner countries - dissemination activities and promotion actions for Erasmus+ projects and this specific project - general project management Achievements The concrete results of this project are: - Intellectual output The Book of Life Toolkit, that is containing: 1. Publication for youngsters and youth workers: "The Book of Life: Manual for independent life" 2. Publication for youth workers: "The Hero's Journey: Personal development program" 3. Publication for young people: "Tips & tricks for Life" 4. The website www.thebookoflife.infoproject.eu - Impact on improving the healthy lifestyle on 320 young people - Training of 20 youth workers on using The Book of Life Toolkit on long term in their youth work - 5 multiplier events with 152 participants - youth workers, NGO representative and other stakeholders - Dissemination of the project outputs in websites and social media - Increased capacity of the partner organisations to develop more and high quality standard activities for young people and youth workers.