Mobile Program for Youth Learners

The non-formal education industry supports and coordinates the education of youth increasing their general and academic insight, skills, enhances the ability and desire to take responsibility for...

The priorities and topics were ensured through the project result - the Mobile Program for Youth Learners. The main objective of the project was to develop young people's leadership, responsibility, self-motivation to teach/lead next youth leaders and strengthen their belonging in social communities through the mobile program. The mobile education program was designed to be adaptable to different sectors of formal and non-formal education for youth of 13-15 years. This program now supports teachers (San Gabriel School) and teaching leaders (Scout Society, Krimulda Congregation). Through this mobile education program, the project promoted young people’s sense of belonging and initiative - leadership, self-motivation and social entrepreneurship - responsibility. The program also promoted the development of lifelong key competences of a) literacy, b) language, c) personal, social and learning, d) cultural awareness and expression of the young people. The Mobile Program is freely accessible through the use of open licenses in order to support teachers and leaders of non-formal education organizations throughout Latvia in Latvian, Spain in Spanish, Romania in Romanian and throughout other EU Member States and outside in English.

The implementation of this project will allow to look at the problem more broadly, thus offering a solution to a wider range of young people and a wider usage spectrum. Partners were needed to develop a more diverse, comprehensive and thorough program based in particular on the needs, necessitates and values of young people's personal development, as well as training youth workers. The project also needed partners' wide experiences from different sectors - religion, education, social. Each of the partners in the project shared their experience and gained from the development of the specific field of its organization. The main objective of this project was to develop young people's skills of leadership, responsibility and self-motivation, as well as to strengthen a sense of belonging in young people in social communities. There were 6 main activities implemented within the project lifecycle. Each activity was planned in order to help achieve the main project objective, main goal, specific goals, Programme's priorities and aims of tasks. The activities were: 1. Designing of a Mobile Program (PPR). All partners jointly worked on the development of PPR in order to reach the main project objective. Lesson plans were designed in a way as to motivate young people to lead next youth groups, to take responsibility upon their actions and to create an atmosphere of belonging. This was ensured through the nine Christian core values (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). Additionally, belonging was promoted by maintaining an open, curious mindset, developing their self-awareness to feel belonged, by cultivating relationships for a sense of belonging, discerning the difference between a true sense of belonging and just “fitting in”. Belonging was the key factor of promoting inclusion, equality and non-discrimination of youth of different backgrounds and experiences. Leadership, responsibility, belonging, self-motivation (LRBM) and key competences were ensured through aims of every lesson plan through different non-formal methods and approaches. All of this resulted in a new, innovative curriculum thus supporting teachers (Gabriel) and teaching leaders (Scout, Krimulda). 2. Testing of PPR by regular feedback after each lesson ensured that the Mobile Program was in particular developed on the needs and desires of young people. 3. An intensive 3-day training course (TC3) led by an invited expert Peter Acton and WG7 leaders S.Zalupe, C.Sfirlogea, E.Vives for the whole project team ensured a highly professional approach in teaching the young people, which resulted in a raised awareness and knowledge of the values promoted by the project, including the main objective, main goal, specific goals, Programme's priorities and aims of tasks. 4. An intensive 4-day teaching course (TC4) in each partner country for all target groups. TC4 was an integral part of PPR, therefore all participants not only learned and exchanged experiences during TC4, but additionally continued working on the development of PPR. This intensive course boosted up and refreshed qualities and values taught during the school year and were rooted into young people's minds. This activity in particular promoted the main objective, Programme's priorities and aims of tasks. 5. ME in Latvia, Spain and Romania separately was organized by all participants. The aim of ME was to boost up dissemination of the project results and its values of LRBM. The project teams invited the necessary experts of the field of project scope (e.g.Latvia invited Anna Poindere from Limbaži Region Entrepreneurs' Consultative Council and project partners). This activity was the beginning of a follow-up and sustainability of the project. 6. Communication and dissemination throughout the project lifecycle ensured project’s visibility and transferability of the project's results. This activity was necessary to promote values of EC and Erasmus+ Programme along with the values of the project.

During the project lifecycle the project team developed the Mobile Program adoptable to different sectors, simultaneously practicing it in three partner countries - Latvia, Romania and Spain, in weekly lessons. The triple practices helped to update each lesson developed jointly by all partners and youth through feedback of the young people and teaching staff, taking into account the principle of teaching and learning. For a graphic design of roles and responsibilities, please see Annex 1, 'Project Team' of the submitted project proposal. The learners of Krimulda Sunday School, Scout Society and San Gabriel School's branch of education of interests were asked to give a feedback after each lesson. Professionals of San Gabriel School supervised the development of the Mobile Program regarding the aspect of methodology, maximized digitalization of the project outputs, inclusion and equality. Leaders of Scout Society supervised the development of the Mobile Program regarding the aspect of initiative, social entrepreneurship, greener approaches, non-formal methods of the project activities, cultural awareness, inclusion and equality. Krimulda Congregation supervised the development of the Mobile Program regarding the aspect of individual approach towards each learner, inclusion, equality, active promotion of the nine core values, LRBM and key competences. All partners actively involved in identifying the needs of young people through individual approach. Thanks to such an individual approach, teachers of Krimulda were able to stimulate young people's sense of belonging and responsibility, as well as self-motivation. Youth learners were asked for a feedback in accordance with the themes covered by the MoPYL after their weekly classes. The MoPYL is available in all project partner mother tongues - Latvian, Spanish and Romanian, as well as in English. MoPYL in all four languages is freely available through the use of open licenses in the project’s homepage www.mopyl.eu and all project partner homepages relate to the project’s homepage. The project results turned out to be so enormous that the partner homepages could not provide a qualitative display of them, because each language consists of 40 documents, which makes the total of 160 documents. Additionally, the project results are available on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform in the same way as in the partners’ homepages. The project team committed to continue to disseminate the project results after the project lifecycle through the Memorandum of Understanding and Sustainability Plan signed by all partners. In this manner the project team expects the MoPYL to become recognizable throughout their countries not only by the free access in partners' homepages but also by the final conferences in all partner countries, where the results were disseminated. Additionally, the project team made available the Research Report for the development of the MoPYL along with the lesson plans. The research was done at the highest academic level starting with questionnaires (302 TG1 respondents) and going through Focus Groups in each Country (TG2), thus making the data legal and possible to use for other initiatives as the basis of needs analysis and/or further development. The research was led by the Spanish partners and in accordance with the legislation of their country; such research must have an approval of the Ethics Committee of Aragon Government of Spain. The project has gone through all the legal steps of a research, received the permission and was developed at a high supervision level. The first course of the MoPYL was planned mostly for thirteen year old teenagers. Non-formal education organizations, unlike regular schools do not form classes of definite age, therefore there - in one class, can be teenagers of different ages. This was an aspect that lead the project consortium to think of a continued curriculum for the second course learners.