On 16-18 September 2019 we held a very productive kick off meeting in Petrohan, Bulgaria, of our long term project “It’s All About Solidarity”  (2019-1-BG01-KA205-062198) – Strategic Partnerships for Youth – Key Action 2 funded by the Human Resources Development Center under the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission.

The project is coordinated by the International Foundation for Y-PEER Development, Bulgaria, with its partner organizations from Italy (CET Platform), Greece (Kinoniki Sinetairistiki Epicherisielliniki Picherisielliniki Symmetochi Neon), Austria (GEMMA) and Turkey (Youth Approaches to Health). The project focuses on the social inclusion, integration and empowerment of young refugees and migrants.

The participants in the kick off meeting were 10 project coordinators and youth wokrers from the partner organizations. Apart from being a platform to introduce the participating organizations and to answer any practical and conceptual questions, the meeting presented each organization with their tasks for the project implementation and provided the space to plan in a comprehensive way the steps for the development of the strategic partnership and the implementation of the activities. The aim of the kick-off meeting was to bring partners together for a face-to-face meeting, officially introduce the project, to discuss and agree on project management and implementation strategies: distributing additional tasks and responsibilities, agreeing on the communication and valorisation strategies, on measures for assessing the quality, monitoring and evaluation, the methodologies for selecting participants and implementing the foreseen activities, etc.

An important objective of the kick-off meeting was finalizing the agenda for the upcoming international training “Storytelling for Youth Workers: The Power of Words” that will take place in Bulgaria on 24-30 November, 2019., and clarifying each partner’s role in it, the methodologies and best practices that will be presented. The main items in the agenda were:

– Welcome by the international foundation of Y-PEER development.

– Introducing the participants and getting to know each other.

– Presenting the partner organizations and their experience in the field of integration and social inclusion of migrants and refugees.

– Discussing the content and the expected results of the project.

– Discussing the next international and local activities of the project and the tasks for each activity.

– Exchanging information and experiences from all the partner organizations.

– Sharing experience of innovative activities and good examples of supporting young people, especially young refugees and migrants.

– Presenting the online platform “Speak Act Change”, which would be used for disseminating information about the project.

– Discussing the content and agenda of the international training in Bulgaria.

– Group work and providing inputs from each partner organizations for the programme design as well as for the programme follow up and evaluation.

– Understanding and clarifying roles and next steps.