Youth Ambassadors of Non-Formal Learning

Youth Ambassadors of Non-Formal Learning – the beginning of an exciting and challenging initiative

Youth Ambassadors of Non-Formal Learning is a cooperation initiative launched by 11 CSOs from the EU, Western Balkans and Turkey which aims at promoting participation in Non-Formal Education activities and the power of validation and recognition of competences acquired outside the formal education environment through an innovative methodology.

With our two-year long project, we want to take into consideration what has been done so far within this area, research for best practices and successful stories, and get ready to go on the field to reinforce the importance of Non-Formal Learning.

Young people are often not convinced that they can improve their employability through Non-Formal Education, while they believe the skills and competences obtained through work and formal education are considered more relevant. We wish to change this trend. The peer-to-peer learning in this field is supposed to be much more powerful. We wish to “institutionalize” this figure and prepare them with a given methodology to be the right Ambassadors for this message.

So, our mission is to build a completely new:

Methodology for preparation of the “Youth Ambassadors” of Non-Formal Learning
Manuals to multiply and prepare additional Youth Ambassadors
Research both on successful stories of other youngsters, and on the current policies adopted in different countries in Europe
Perspective on the work done by info points for NFL experiences, both working on providing opportunities but also on explaining how these opportunities can be useful and used for future personal and professional life
Platform to provide the Youth Ambassadors with a sharing field in which they can work together on new ideas, exchanging impressions, best practices and give each other suggestions and inputs
Network of people, starting with a European regional approach, that can rather move around Europe with the purpose of sharing their stories and bringing up useful ideas for youngsters to motivate them in taking part in NFL activities and use them proficiently

The overall work is set to collect different points of view ultimately leading to the creation of suggestions for innovative policies in the field of recognition and validation of NFL, as the Ambassadors will keep on collecting such inputs throughout their work around the country.

With that in mind, the objectives we want to reach are:

to research, collect, analyze and spread existing best practices and policies in the field of validation and recognition of NFL, as well as successful stories of young people, in the 11 countries participating in the project
to train 22 “Young Ambassadors” to promote the role of NFL in the development of competences starting from real experiences on the field, successful stories and dedicated methods
to create a network of Young Ambassadors of NFL to set up the base for sustainable work in the field of promotion of NFL, setting up a platform for sharing of stories, challenges, ideas and best practices
to produce a complete methodology for the “Young Ambassadors of NFL” concept, including a dedicated manual, a catalogue of successful stories, online and offline tools, and methods for facilitation of dedicated workshops
to develop a set of recommendations to facilitate the creation of new policies for the validation and recognition of competences acquired outside the formal education environment, involving public institutions, private sector and civil society

This initiative is led by Local Democracy Agency Mostar (Mostar/Bosnia and Herzegovina) and enriched by the great experience of Društvo za razvijanje prostovoljnega dela Novo mesto (Novo mesto/Slovenia), The Future Now Association (Sofia/Bulgaria), Kosovo Center of Diplomacy (Prishtina/ Kosovo*), United Societies of Balkans (Thessaloniki/Greece), Youth 4 Society (Tirana/Albania); Center for Intercultural Dialogue (Kumanovo/North Macedonia), Asocijacija za demokratski prosperitet – ZID (ADP-ZID) (Podgorica/Montenegro), NGO IUVENTA (Šabac/Serbia), Turk Girisim ve Is Dunyasi Konfederasyonu (Istanbul/Turkey) and TDM 2000 (Cagliari/Italy).