You.Change.com: Empowering Young Disadvantaged Individuals to trigger change in their communities

You.change.com aims at recruiting young people with fewer opportunities to act as ‘change makers’ (Community Angels) in their communities.

Grant Agreement Number: 2016-2-ES02-KA205-008220

Funded by: Erasmus+ Duration: 09/2016-08/2018

Challenge

One of the major problems that Europe should face is the lack of active participation of youth in their societies. This is partially due to their socio-economic position which has deteriorated over the last decade. The high youth unemployment and the political distrust have diminished their active participation.

Specifically, 47% (Eurobarometer 2018) of youth do not participate in activities organized by different organizations in 2017, with Cyprus (67%), Greece (52%) and Spain (42%) ranking particularly high. Also, 37% of youth was involved in voluntary activities in 2017. This limited active participation of youth in their societies could increase their marginalization, leading them gradually to social exclusion.

Innovation

By stimulating disadvantaged youth to undertake the role of community angels and to shape their own ideas, utilizing land recycling, Youchange.com aims at increasing the youth contribution in their communities. This will have a broader impact as the members of the communities will benefit from the new provided services.

Action

A training curriculum was developed to turn youth into community angels and consists of 4 modules: soft skills, business & entrepreneurial skills, community project skills, horizontal skills for community plans.

The curriculum is based on a comprehensive analysis about the needs and the skills of the youth in order to produce positive social impact in their communities.

For more information see the Modules here.

After the training, the community angels elaborated their proposed actions which took place in disused spaces. The selection criteria were quality, impact, continuity, visibility and originality of each project.

The selected Action Plan was entitled “Educational Theatrical Play having as a theme the Trafficking of women” and its purpose was to sensitize local community members on the major issue of trafficking of human beings for sexual exploitation purposes, as well as on the social role of women, particularly women of vulnerable social groups.