Hidden Dimensions

Intro

The ‘Hidden Dimensions of Inclusion in the Youth Sector’ project is an international collaboration of three civil society organizations from Eastern-Europe engaged in education, social work and/or advocacy. The strategic partnership is financed by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.

Civil society organizations who are collaborating within this project have a wide range of experience/expertise of involvement young people living with disabilities into local and international actions/learning experiences. Inclusion of young people living with disabilities is a main horizontal objective of our daily work, promoting the Independent Living Movement and empowering young people to be more self-sustainable and active citizens along the way. Our experience is that there is little emphasis on involving young people living with disabilities into European mobility schemes; according to data supplied by Hungarian Erasmus+ National Agency a meagre 1,9% of the total number of participants were of special needs in KA105 projects hosted in Hungary in 2019.

Young people living with disabilities are often deprived of community activities and less willing to mobilise which affects their social status and environment on the long run. Educational institutions are trying to integrate these young people with limited success, limitations being inflexible pedagogic framework, lack of qualified experts and lack of proper and barrier-free environment. Thus, youth work seems to be an adequate tool for fostering social inclusion and active citizenship of people living with disabilities. However - as available statistical data suggests - accessibility of mobility schemes and youth NGOs in general are limited. Why? What key stakeholders – grassroots, youth services, NGOs, NAs, policy makers, networks and resource centres – should do to improve accessibility?

Our 27 months long project:

• aims to find the answer by conducting an empirical research and formulating policy recommendations
• focuses on assessing barriers in existing youth work infrastructures – defining barriers as wide as possible
• gathers data and knowledge from professionals working within the field.

During the project in three EU countries

• we will conduct survey with 50 youth organizations per country (at least 150 youth worker in each country) with a questionnaire
• in 20 cases, we would conduct in-depth interviews with the leaders of selected youth organizations, based on the results of the questionnaires and analysis of organisational documents
• we will publish a research report and policy proposals, based on the results
• based on the results, using the intellectual products created during the project, we initiate a professional dialogue with the youth services through conferences and intensive communication increasing the accessibility of their youth services

Research

Based on the conceptualisation we'll use three types of methods to mapping youth organisations in Hungary, Greece and Romania:

• 1) Anonym online questionnaire in survio.com based on three studies with instruments which measured attitudes of social workers (Balázs-Földi, 2018; Cheatham és mtsai., 2015, Gregory, Noto 2012) – filled by at least 150 youth worker.
• 2) Document analysation of 20 youth organisation of the emergence of a strategy for involving people with disabilities.
• 3) Based on the results of the questionnaire, and the document analysation we conduct interviews along the analysed data with 20 leaders of youth organisations (chairman, chairperson, executive director, managing director).

First we compile a list of organizations whose primary target group is young people, and it will primarily - but not exclusively- compress those who implement E + youth programs in our countries. In the list we collect their names, phone number, email address, and a name of a contact person. We would like to draw their attention to our questionnaire via phone, so we can get the name of the contact person, in this way we can refer to the contact person via email, or phone in the event of an insufficient number of respondents and we can encourage completion.

At the end of the questionnaire part of research we must have at least 150 completed questionnaires in each country, filled by employees of youth organisations who meets with description of youth worker

We use the firstly formulated list to select those 20 youth organisation who’ll participate in the document analysation. The selection process is based on randomisation we want to reduce distortions during the measurement, and it also serves to eliminate bias. Randomization is achieved by putting the names of the organizations in a hat and pulling out that 20 which we are examining. As a final step, based on the questionnaire and document analysis, we compile a set of questions for the interviews of the leaders of the organizations. We prepare as a summary an anonymized narrative report about the results of the interviews. Project results are uploaded to the download page.

Partnership

Együttható was founded by social professionals, and enthusiastic young volunteers in 2010 to promote non-formal learning, innovative community services and a new way of thinking in youth and social work. It operates a youth information office in the 4th district of Budapest and an afterschool located in Gyöngyös. Inclusion of young people living with disabilities is an important objective at Hatáspont Tanoda - more than 20% of enrolled students are living with disabilites, including Autism Spectrum Disorder. Apart from individual tutoring and applying special pedagogy, non-formal education is a key method in developing soft-skills of our students.

United Society of Balkans is a non-profit, NGO in the field of youth work, human rights and intercultural dialogue in Thessaloniki, Greece. The organisation was founded in 2008 by a group of active young people who wanted to address the social issues which affect the youngsters in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The vision and aim of the organisation is to promote youth empowerment, participation in economic and political life, youth mobility, voluntarism and human rights.

Nevo Parudimos is a non-profit apolitical organization which was founded by a group of teachers, Roma activists and Roma students from Caras-Severin county, in the south-west of Romania in 2008. The aim of the Nevo Parudimos association is to decrease the economic, social, educational and cultural differences in the society. The organization is recognized in disadvantaged and Roma people’s inclusion projects. Nevo Parudimos is the first NGO promoting in Romania the CLLD principles and the bottom up approach in planning and developing local development programs and since 4 years we make lobby and support local people to have a voice in order to be equal partners in the decision making process at local level.

Downloads

Research Reports and Policy Recommendations - Hungary
Research report on Hungary - Quantitative - language: Hungarian
Research report on Hungary - Qualitative - language: Hungarian
Policy proposals for Hungary - language: Hungarian
Research report on Hungary - Quantitative - language: English

Contact us

Questions? Feel free to contact us!
National coordinators of the project:

Melinda Nagy-Szentpétery, Együttható Egyesület, Hungary, info@egyutthato.eu
Yannis Tsilsou, United Society of Balkans, Greece, info@usbngo.gr
Büşra Akdoğan, Nevo Parudimos, Romania, nevoparudimos@yahoo.com

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