The role of associations in areas such as active citizenship, civic cohesion and youth empowerment is nowadays fundamental. Young Roads aims at filling the void created by the growing disinterest in all those activities that make up the civil ‘‘humus’’ of our society, such as culture, in its use and management, associationism and volunteering in all their forms. Using these ‘’good civil manners’’ we want to establish a path to the creation of a new peer-to-peer informal education.

In the city and province of Mantua (Italy) and Thessaloniki (Greece)

European data indicate that Italy (24.1%) and Greece (21.3%) have the highest rate of NEET in the whole Union. Specifically, in Mantua, the data on neet (19%) and pre-diploma school dropouts (15%) are among the worst at national level.
The challenge we want to face is the decay of motivation that pushes young people (15/29) to approach the world of associations and active citizenship, with the aim of creating spaces in which young people meet, live different experiences from school or university and discuss ideas and create projects. The goal is to fuel the flame of civil activism and group conscience, which in the absence of paths like these, risks never igniting.
The lack of this vocation risks drying up our city and its cultural and civic life.

We target as main focus a group of 20 Italian and 20 Greeks aged between 15 and 29 made up of 50% of neets - with and without diploma - and migrants and 50% of high school students, students involved in politics and local associations volunteers.
We are also going to involve almost 300 students through school meetings and formations and 40 volunteers from each of the two involved associations.
The idea of working with the Pontian Union of Menemeni association and targeting 2 different countries community stems from the need for an exchange of good social practices: Arci Tom wants to export its idea of work on youth inclusion, P.U.M wants to export the cohesion and strength it has been able to achieve through volunteers’ management.

-Promotion and communication of the project / opening of the call in order to form the heterogeneous team;
-Intersectoral planning with the community: using a bottom up approach we will work with the team in order to identify the youth community’s problems related to the lack of civic participation. The key group will scan their community using questionnaires, school meetings, the presence of youth info points. The results of the social analysis will be used as a basis to define the main focuses that will be addressed during the training course.
-Team training and workshop (including online formation with the Greek group).The training course will include a theoretical part with experts from various fields (sociology, psychology, urban regeneration, politics) and a practical part in collaboration with other associations in the area;
-Further openness to the community through moments of dialogue with various indirect beneficiaries (students, teachers, municipal officials) to discuss the problems that emerged from the social analysis and hypothesize possible solutions;
-Training in schools;
-10 days of an exchange-training in Greece and vice versa
-Workshops and focused on the Greek’s good ‘civic pratices’
-Short docu-film production
-Establishment of a group of young people who come out of the empowerment project in order to make them became tutors for other youth groups

Outputs: 1 experimental empowerment path, 20 young beneficiaries (tutored), 15 Greek beneficiaries (tutored), 10 courses in schools, 300 students involved with school paths, 500 people involved among citizens and arci members through the workshops and the final event, 30 volunteers and social, cultural workers (tutors), 2 European exchanges, 2 major events, 1 short docu-film, 20 media citations, 1 radio podcast.
Outcomes: 1 consolidated group of young people who pass from tutored to tutors, 30 new young people intercepted, 3 meetings with institutions, 10 courses in schools managed by the group of young people.

We believe that our project can renew our community through the subversion of the paradigm that sees the classic institutions as mentoring for young people: in a liquid society like the current one, this process is not enough to give the new generations the tools to become an active part of the civic processes.
Our intention is not to take the place of the educational system, but to create a path towards awareness with and for young people, so that, by developing a critical sense of their condition, they are able to get out of the passive state in which they often find themselves and become actors and promoters of the social cohesion of their territory.

The project Young Roads is important to us because we, as managers of the Arci Tom aps (Martina 27, Iulian 24) and Pontian Union of Menemeni (Melina 24) have in turn been involved in similar processes but in a way more incoherent and segmented way. We almost found ourselves filling our role, which we are proud of today, even though a complete tutoring process was lacking.
Although we are convinced that paths that include self-made steps are fundamental in personal and professional growth, we want to regulate and organize a vademecum that helps young people to reach this point of awareness with more stability and clarity.
If we could achieve the guidance of young people towards this empowerment, our community would become stronger, more cohesive and confident in the future.

Secretariat, administration, organizational staff: 10.000 €
Project communication, promotion and publicity, advertising: 4.000 €
Project documentation and final results publication: 2.500 €
Workshops: 2.500 €
Tv show 0 €
Radio podcast 0 €
Travel and accommodation: 10.000 €
Events Logistics: 5.000 €
Volunteer training: 4.000 €
Spaces management costs: 2.000 €

We would like to ask you a question: why shouldn't it be a priority to create a young, multicultural, attentive work group with a common vision that includes the experiences and knowledge of many young Europeans?