Parcours le Monde IDF decided to join Connectivity as an opportunity to share expertise with a consortium of skilled European partners on mentoring young adults experiencing difficulties in their life; all this while supporting them with questions about their future career paths. Additionally, learning through the Connectivity network was seen as a way to acquire new tools to make programs for young people with limited opportunities more efficient and to increase the reach with “invisible” audiences.
In the first year, the project started to create new opportunities and horizons for all of its participants. Parcours le Monde IDF enlarged and reinforced its European network, meeting 6 new organizations working in the same field of youth inclusion and employment. Bridges were built towards new partnerships for specific future projects, such as youth exchanges.
The announcement about the topics of the first training meeting was well received among the local youth organizations, a testament to its relevance and its importance. For Parcours le Monde IDF, this was a step forward in increasing awareness of available resources to develop new activities for young people. During the meeting, natural networking took place between French participants, with knowledge and experiences shared between experienced youth workers and newcomers. The sharing of good practices, tips, and ideas, and the will of designing projects together, have continued after the meeting. The Connectivity project concretely connected European and local professionals around one common topic in order to develop a new methodology.
Depending on their realities, each organization adjusted the content of the meeting to modify and improve their way of working. As a result, one organization decided to welcome volunteers to a local social center and provide them with a tailored mission based on their interests. Another organization, very impressed by the role of bikes in Dutch society, is planning to take a group of young adults attending the same center for a bike ride to the sea. Another participant is thinking of implementing a skills identification and recognition plan for the volunteers of the eco-recycling center.
At this stage of the project, Connectivity gathered participants from 7 European countries and gave all of us the opportunity to learn more about youth policies across Europe while reflecting on our way of working and implementing new tools and methodologies. It facilitated the creation of new partnerships at local, national, and international levels.
How do we create impact in the long run? What are the tips and tricks that we would like to share?
Keep reading and find out more…
Parcours le Monde – IDF promotes international mobility for young adults from 18 to 30, regardless of their qualifications and experience. Our non-profit organization considers that international mobility is a structuring step towards inclusion and employability, particularly for young people with fewer opportunities. Whether it is a job, an internship, or volunteering, an experience abroad always provides many learning outcomes that could be personal, cultural, professional, linguistic, and technical. We developed a specific method to work with our target group, which is young adults with fewer opportunities aged from 18 to 30 years old. Resumed, our approach consists of the following:
- workshops to raise awareness among the target group;
- information meeting about our organization and programs;
- individual and tailored support combined with collective workshops.
Our methods to reach young adults with fewer opportunities
Regular workshops to build up the connexion (= M0)
From our experience, we conclude that the further young people are from international opportunities, the less they are searching for information to go abroad. There is a censorship effect: they don’t think they have the requirements to enroll in an international project, so they don’t consider it as a possibility. The idea is then to go out to them instead of waiting for them to come to us. To get around this barrier, we are developing partnerships with organizations that run regular activities with marginalized young adults, whether local associations well implemented in a neighborhood and close to the population, or well-known socio-educative state/municipal institutions. From there, there are two options (that can be done one after the other one, according to the needs):
- together with the partner we organize a specific workshop on the topic of our program: international mobility; we come to their building with prepared activities based on non-formal education, to open the discussion about our topic; it can be through board games we created, or a mixture of different interactive games such as a debate, a quiz and so on; we discuss together with the partner which tools are more relevant for their public and space; the purpose is to make them curious about international mobility and show them that it is accessible to each of them, and also to deconstruct stereotypes and false ideas about international mobility;
- we join an existing event on a more general topic including different partners to which our topic is relevant; it can also be one of our partners who intervenes in a local structure and invites us to join him/her; in this case, we adapt to the format of the event, but also to the upcoming participants and the dynamic of the event in the present moment; this kind of on-the-spot intervention requires more flexibility.
To give an example: we built a partnership with a local youth work council, and one counselor is going regularly to a prevention association to speak about professional projects with young people coming by the association. Once per month, we come with him so that he can introduce Parcours Le Monde IDF to the young people coming by that day. Depending on how the meeting evolves, either we use one of the games we brought, or we discuss in a group or individually with the young people to raise their curiosity and answer their questions.
The key element of this approach is to come several times and as regularly as possible within the organization, so that progressively, the young people spending time regularly in this place get to know Parcours Le Monde IDF and are more and more curious. The fact that we come back, again and again, helps to build trust and gives them the opportunity to ask questions as the idea of going abroad grows in them.
Information meeting about our organization and program (= M1)
This kind of meeting goes deeper into details, presenting Parcours Le Monde IDF’s organization, its purpose, and its service offers. But we also introduce existing programs giving opportunities to go abroad (whether it is volunteering, internship, or work).
For the beneficiaries, coming to an information meeting can be their first step into Parcours Le Monde or their second if they have participated in one of the workshops presented above.
We use a visual presentation that we created with the online tool PREZI. During this presentation, we are paying attention to stimulating interactions. We do not want them to passively listen to the presentation and be overwhelmed by information, we want them to feel comfortable asking questions and sharing ideas in order to take these into consideration and adapt the presentation to them, insisting more or less on certain aspects. We feel that it is more lively if we encourage interactions. Each time is different!
These information meetings are taking place every second week, on the same day and same hour. This can be done:
- online, and we share our screen for the presentation;
- face-to-face in our office; plus, we offer our professional partners to come in their place to run these information meetings specifically for their beneficiaries.
In addition, we develop webinars or face-to-face meetings dedicated to professionals working with young unemployed adults. Often, the lack of information among professionals concerning international opportunities accessible to this target group is blocking this accessibility. Therefore, we do it to inform the professionals about existing international programs corresponding to the young unemployed people’s needs and allow them to overcome the obstacles they usually face. Thanks to these interventions among professionals, the young unemployed people are more informed, so it is helping us reach our target group.
Communication
We chose communication tools that are mostly used by young people and we adapt the format and content to make it accessible to our target group, and also to raise their motivation and curiosity.
Moreover, in order to facilitate the interactions during workshops or meetings and strengthen the impact of our intervention among them, we try as much as possible to invite young persons who experience international mobility in order to share their experiences and testify. We noticed that it is the most convincing way to make them believe that they can seize international opportunities. In case nobody is available to accompany us, then we use testimonial videos of young people.
Our reinforced support method (= M2)
Individual and tailored support
Parcours le Monde IDF has developed a reinforced mentorship program to overcome the various barriers that young people with fewer opportunities may have and prepare them for mobility in itself. It is face-to-face support during every phase of the project: before, during, and after international mobility. This program consists of individual meetings and collective workshops.
A face-to-face meeting is a determinant for young people with fewer opportunities. More than anyone, they need help to sort the information, think about and plan their project. Most of them are not comfortable in English and reluctant to use online platforms for a meeting (when they have access to a computer), and generally speaking, they are worried and not autonomous enough to carry out the project alone. We noticed that most of the young NEETS are not used to doing administrative procedures and are not always comfortable with using a computer to do so. Most of them use only a smartphone and not a computer, which can be less comfortable for some tasks. Therefore, a face-to-face meeting is better to help them use the computer to do administrative procedures if they need it, and/or to lend them a computer if they don’t have one.
However, during the pandemic crisis of COVID-19, we have had to suspend face-to-face meetings. Instead, we used an online platform to do individual video meetings. Unfortunately, we know it is not doable and accessible for every young NEETS, as the digital gap is still a reality in some areas. Still, it was a good solution to keep our individual support active. From this experience, we learned that individual support mixed with face-to-face and online meetings is actually a good compromise in some situations. Indeed, the region where we work, Ile-de-France, is extended, sometimes the beneficiary has to commute for 1h or 2h to come to our office for a 30 mins or 1h face-to-face meeting. For some of them, it can be a barrier, either because of a lack of time or because of a lack of money to pay for the tickets back and forth. Using an online platform can be an answer in this case. We will always try to give the priority to face-to-face meetings, in order to build an easily trustful relationship.
Moreover, the individual support is adapted to the rhythm of the beneficiary: there is no imposed rhythm of regular meetings, we rather go with the flow of their demands, in order to allow the young person to cope with his personal situation step by step and organize what has to be done to build his/her project.
The different meetings aim at helping them to transform their desire to go abroad into a real and appropriate project and to understand the objectives and the challenges to participate in international volunteer work. We take the time to sound out their motivations (desire to feel useful, to discover a new culture, to get some fresh air, need to improve their level of English…) and to define some specific and realistic learning objectives. The relationship of trust that is established during the pre-departure sessions allows them to alleviate their fears, prepare them for the cultural shock, and invite them to adopt an open-minded and inquiring attitude toward cultural differences in order to facilitate their integration into the host country or deal with conflict situations. The international mobility advisers use a specific notebook, a tool that we created to mentor young participants in the best conditions, during the entire period of the youngster’s project. It highlights their learning objectives and improvements, both on a personal and a professional level. In addition, we give the participant a personal logbook, following every step of the project, for him/her to keep track of the process and realize the progress made.
Before each departure, Parcours le Monde IDF organizes linguistic release workshops in order to give them some basic and most of all, to overcome the (French) complex of speaking English. Through little games or role-play, we remobilize their knowledge and give them an opportunity to practice.
This specific mentorship represents a total of at least 23 hours per beneficiary.
BEFORE DEPARTURE:
- Individual meetings: elaboration of the project, administrative points;
- Collective workshops (with non-formal education tools): ESC and EU, host country, interculturality, learning goals, English workshops…;
- Skype meeting with the hosting organization.
DURING the MOBILITY
More or less 3 Skype meetings between the mobility adviser and the young person to support the learning process and facilitate the experience. We adapt according to the needs.
AFTER the MOBILITY
Individual meetings and collective workshops to support and release the emotional stress to be back home. In the second step, we run activities to help them identify the personal learning outcomes, and to prepare the recognition of their experience within their professional path. We also mention and prepare the next steps of their vocational path or next personal project. They are also encouraged to take part in any kind of international mobility promotion activities (testimonies through videos, radio, written text, coming to a public event to present to other young people what they experienced abroad…).
To summarize, the aim of the individual and collective preparation before departure is to bring them the knowledge, the know-how, and the social skills that they will need during their experience, and also to help them reinforce their motivation and self-confidence. The individual and collective workshops after mobility are there for supporting the identification of the learning outcomes and move forward in their life path.