ENpower Workshop goal was to gain understanding of Ukrainian context in regards to youth sector and cross sector cooperation for supporting young people. The information and expertise collected during the one-day event was then used in adapting the ENpower training toolkit, training course and mentorship program to local challenges regarding entrepreneurship education and youth employment.

ENpower workshop was organized in 16-17 June 2018, in Lviv, Ukraine, with relevant stakeholders from private sector, universities, youth and student organizations, and partners’ representatives. The 15 experts supported ENPower partners in understanding challenges that both young people and employers/entrepreneurs face on the labor market and in the opening and running local businesses.

We learned that when they want to open a business, young people from Ukraine face the following challenges:

• lack of valuable entrepreneurship formal or non-formal educational programs;
• lack of career counseling in schools;
• lack of the entrepreneurship initiative and entrepreneurship attitude (low levels of self-awareness, consciousness, autonomy, self-confidence, critical thinking and strategic thinking, creativity, risk taking, decision making were identified by the experts we interacted with);
• high bureaucracy and taxes for running businesses and unstable political and economic system;
• financial pressure that makes them to find a job as quickly as possible to support themselves and their families and give up any entrepreneurship initiative they might have;
• lack of mobility from one region of Ukraine to another, caused by cultural habits;
• lack of good and healthy business networks.

The participants to the workshop also provided valuable information on the challenges faced by young people when searching for a job or by employers and entrepreneurs when they want to hire young people for the vacant position they have. The ENpower project does not aim and cannot to solve and address all the challenges identified in the Ukrainian context. Most of the challenges are structural, culturally, politically or economically determined. The project, through the training and mentorship programs, aims at addressing challenges related to the young people’s knowledge, skills, and attitudes, but also some of the challenges related to the lack of proper entrepreneurships education programs or career counselling programs. 

ENpower project – Bridges to ENpower. Cross-sectorial initiative to support the young people in their quest for ENtrepreneurship – is co-funded by European Commission, through Erasmus+ Programme (KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices -Capacity Building in the field of Youth), and implemented by Rehionalnyj Blahodijnyj Fond “Rezonans” (Resonance Foundation, Ukraine, lead organization), Fundatia Danis pentru Dezvoltare Manageriala (Fundatia Danis, Romania), Norsensus Mediaforum (Norsensus, Norway) and Fundacja Aktywnych Inicjatyw Rozwoju (FAIR, Poland).

Bridges to ENpower aims to improve the quality of youth work in Ukraine, in the field of entrepreneurship education for young people, and to foster cooperation and exchanges between youth organizations from Ukraine, Poland, Romania and Norway.

This policy brief explores the challenges of the cooperation between SMEs and youth organizations from Norway, and it provides solutions for improving NGOs’ capacity to better cooperate with the business sector, through a local development program.

• READ THE FULL POLICY BRIEF OF NORWAY IN ENGLISH 
• READ THE FULL POLICY BRIEF OF NORWAY IN NORWEGIAN  

ENpower took yourKITE project in Ukraine, and yourKITE developed further, grew, reaching new areas of work with young people and reaching more youth workers and youth organizations.

Bridges to ENpower (Cross-sectorial initiative to support the young people in their quest for ENtrepreneurship), shortly ENpower project aimed: to improve the quality of youth work in Ukraine, in the field of entrepreneurship education for young people, and to foster cooperation and exchanges between youth organizations from Ukraine, Poland, Romania and Norway.

The project was coordinated by Rehionalnyj Blahodijnyj Fond “Rezonans”, and implemented with partners from Norway, Poland and Romania: Norsensus Mediaforum, Fundacja Aktywnych Inicjatyw Rozwoju, and, respectively, Fundatia Danis pentru Dezvoltare Manageriala. The activities of the project took place in October 2017-March 2019.

ENpower specific objectives were:

– Professionalize youth workers from Ukraine in delivering workshops on entrepreneurship education;

– Enhance the capacity of youth organizations from Ukraine to provide mentorship programs for young people, in order to increase their interest, knowledge, and competencies related to entrepreneurship, and to foster their employability;

– Professionalize youth workers from Ukraine in establishing sustainable and efficient cross-sectorial partnerships on the labor market (with companies, SMEs, universities and students associations);

– Foster cooperation between the partner organizations from Ukraine, Poland, Romania and Norway, through common work on developing open educational resources, and through the internationalization of partners’ expertise.

Main results of the project are:

ENpower Toolkit for youth workers, which is based on the partners’ previous experience within yourKITE project.

The toolkit is designed for youth workers/young trainers, and adapted to the Ukrainian context. This helps the youth workers in delivering entrepreneurship education to young people by developing several competencies areas, based on practical activities related to volunteering, visual communication, entrepreneurship, and career counseling.

Check the ENpower Training Toolkit here:

Ukrainian version – https://enpower.yourkite.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ENpower_Toolkit.pdf

English version:

https://enpower.yourkite.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ENpower_Training_Toolkit.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0N1jE-aIgFp5HWBBpb02eiXf1d4TX64RA2yzlX8ZkAdvnXJQ2DVDeN2TE

ENpower training was offered to 29 youth workers, most of them from Ukraine. The training professionalized youth workers on how to use the ENpower Training Toolkit and the ENpower Mentorship Program for young people. The training took place in Poland, in January 2019.

In support for youth workers that could not attend the face-to-face training, the yourKITE online training was translated in Ukrainian and made available to them.

Check the photos from the training course here:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmCnFKY4

ENpower mentorship program is based on the previous expertise of the partners in internship and business mentorship programs.

The mentorship program was developed by the partners, and adapted to the Ukrainian context. The program goes beyond an internship program, because it aims both to increase young people’s employability and enhance their entrepreneurial skills, knowledge and interest.

Check the ENpower mentorship program here:

Ukrainian version:  https://enpower.yourkite.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/InternshipProgram.pdf

English version:

https://enpower.yourkite.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ENPowerMentorshipProgram-EN.pdf

Read more about the other activities:

ENpower is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

ENpower came to life based on the EU co-funded project – yourKITE, developed and implemented by Norsensus Mediaforum (Norway), Fundacja Aktywnych Inicjatyw Rozwoju (Poland), and Fundatia Danis pentru Dezvoltare Manageriala (Romania).

ENpower conference brought together over 50 relevant stakeholders from private sector, universities, public institutions, youth and student organizations from Ukraine. Throughout the two-day event, we presented the results of the ENPower project, and shared with the participants the ENpower Training Toolkit and the ENpower Mentorship Program. Also, participants from the ENpower training course joined the conference to share their learning experience with other youth organizations from Ukraine, but also to follow-up on the changes the training course brought into their professional life.

The conference took place in Lviv, Ukraine, on 22nd-23rd of March 2019, and it included presentations, panels, world cafe forums, short workshops and a small competition for the participants in using digital education tools for young people. First, ENPower partners introduced the participants the project and its more relevant outcomes – ENPower Training Toolkit and ENPower Mentorship Program. Then, during one panel, partners and participants in the ENPower training course that took place in January 2019, in Poland, shared and talked about the importance and professional impact of the international training course experiences for youth workers. Also, partners and participants in the conference presented best practices in the field of youth, entrepreneurship education and youth employment.

At the same time, ENPower partners and former participants in the training courses delivered workshops on digital education tools, storytelling for young people, funding sources for youth cultural projects, entrepreneurship education games, and new forms of education for young people. Finally, the conference included short workshops for youth workers and other participants who wanted to learn how to use the ENpower Toolkit and ENpower Mentorship Program.

26 youth workers from Ukraine were trained on how to conduct valuable workshops for youth, within ENPower training course, as part of the ENPower project, supported by Erasmus+ Programme.

The training course, organized by Norsensus Mediaforum (Norway), FAIR (Poland) Fundatia Danis (Romania) and Resonance Foundation (Ukraine), took place in Poland, at the end of January 2019.

The event brought together youth workers from the four countries. During the six-day training course, the youth workers learned and developed essential skills on how to conduct workshops for young people. Then, they learned the specifics of conducting training courses on entrepreneurship, visual communication, volunteering and career counselling. Moreover, the youth workers learned about how to organize mentorship or internship programs for young people, involving universities, schools, youth organizations/students unions, and companies and SMEs from their communities. In the last days of the training, in teams and using the ENPower training toolkit, the youth workers conducted small workshops, learning by experience how to put into practice the knowledge and skills gained.

Check here some of the photos from ENpower training course:

Norsensus Mediaforum was represented in the project Stop Hating Start LOVEing, dedicated to promotion of No Hate Speech Movement and fighting hate speech in a non-violent way, with graffiti. The project was organised by Bulgarian partners – Alternativi International in Bansko, Bulgaria on the 20-27th of May in the framework of Erasmus+ KA1.

During this week 30 participants from Estonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Portugal, Macedonia and Norway learned more about hate speech, its causes and consequences, through sharing experience and knowledge from different economical and geographical backgrounds. They have also discussed how to fight hate speech in a non-violent way – through graffiti – and shared information about current situation with hate speech in their countries as well as existing good examples of fighting it.

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In the course of the project participants organised a public action in the city of Razlog, 5 km from Bansko, and created graffities in order to demonstrate how hate speech can be fought in a visual and peaceful way.

Norsensus Mediaforum joined No Hate Speech Movement Online in August 2014, becoming official Norwegian partner of the movement. The No Hate Speech campaign values are closely related to the mission of Norsensus, which is to help development of media literacy skills in the society – an important ingredient of the remedy for hate speech and discrimination.

Since then Norsensus Mediaforum worked with No Hate Speech Movement in Romania as a partner of the project “Digital Literacy for High School Students to Fight Hate Speech and Discrimination in the Media”, run by the Center for Independent Journalism (CIJ).

Norsensus Mediaforum, Fundatia Danis, FRSI and Information Society Development Foundation met up in Romania for training, team-building and further development of the YourKite Project. Cluj is a city with focus on education and entrepreneurship and was the perfect location for learning more about this.

We visited young entrepreneurial projects like Cluj Makers and older structured NGO’s like Civitas. We got a peek on how it can be in the beginning for such organisations and how it is when they are already well developed.

In our training, we learned about different kinds of leadership and the kind of qualities they can bring to projects and organisations. We also learned about the benefits of structuring projects, life or businesses in concrete steps. The dean of the local university visited us to tell us about the promising school-system in Cluj.

Many of us learned that our impression of Romania in advance could not be applied to Cluj, a city with blooming advances in both education and  and with a positive attitude towards the future.

The project is funded by the EU program Erasmus +: Youth. These materials contain recipient’s opinions and views. Neither the National Office for Erasmus +: Youth or the European Commission may be held responsible for the content.

 

The most exciting and funny workshop was held on Saturday, when the teenagers learned the new visual technique – Stop-motion. Stop-motion is an animation technique, where one person moves the objects, while another one takes pictures one by one to create an illusion of independent movement in a coherent film.

Firstly, Abdurrahim and Vedat showed several simple movies, where the stop-motion technique was used, and explained how these films were made. Some of them were very funny and quite primitive; others demanded more time and patience.

Stop-motion videos can be made in a mobile app Stop Motion Studio. Firstly, the youngsters worked on the script of their films and created the clay figures. Afterwards they started to take pictures with the mobile phones one by one, while moving their figures. It was a pretty hard work, but in the course of 2 hours everyone managed to take around 100 pictures, which became a movie.

At the end of the workshop all the participants could watch their freshly made films on a big screen. The majority admitted that it was the most creative and entertaining workshop of VISUALIZE IT project. Everyone used his imagination to create something beautiful and useful.

The participants learned from this workshop that the most important thing is always to have a good idea. In the modern world there are plenty of technical possibilities to bring your ideas to life. The only thing needed is to be creative.