Social exclusion has a major impact on young people, especially for those in disadvantaged areas. Socially excluded young people don’t have access to the same resources as others and lack the opportunities and services to enable them to contribute to society. As a result, they feel that they can not influence their community and have little or no impact on policy decisions directly affecting their life.
CIVACT, an ERASMUS+ Key Action 2 project which ran from October 2018 until December 2020, worked to combat these issues and improve the social engagement of youth at risk of social exclusion across Europe. Project partners developed and tested new methodologies for engaging disadvantaged young people. Youth workers in five pilot neighborhoods took part in occupational training to learn these new engagement methods, and then used their new skills and knowledge to give the young people they work with new experiences with civic engagement and the confidence and tools needed to propose changes to urban regeneration and local development in the areas in which they live.
The project comprised a strong collective of partners that have previous experience working with hard-to-reach youths, district management, and social and educational projects aimed at local development: Lawaetz Stiftung (Hamburg, Germany; Lead partner), Bond of Union (Palermo, Italy), Mapping for Change, (London, UK), Young East, (Gothenburg, Sweden), and APDES (Porto, Portugal).
You can download the outputs of the project here:
- CIVACT Needs Analysis Report
- CIVACT Engagement Method Database (PDF)
- CIVACT Engagement Method Database (online)
- CIVACT Curriculum
- CIVACT Best Practices
- CIVACT Policy Recommendations
You can also watch our closing video here:
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