Independent People

Background The 3 partner organisations, Karlstads Kommun (Sweden), vzwaPart (Belgium), and Humber Learning Consortium (UK) all work with disadvantaged young people who frequently have low levels of critical soft skills, such as motivation, communication, resilience, and problem-solving. We found that our youth work practitioners often use a wide variety of innovative ways in which to develop a young person's soft skills, but their methods and practice could benefit from greater intent/purpose, structure, and transferability. The core ideas behind Independent People were that soft skills are vital competences that young people need to possess in all aspects of their lives, and by capacity-building youth workers to deliver high quality support via non-formal learning approaches, we can help young people to acquire these skills more effectively. Objectives Through the Independent People project, we wanted to provide youth workers with a framework of vital / common soft skills to guide and inform their development activities with young people, equip them with a way of evidencing the development of these skills (a soft skills passport), and create an accessible activity bank (website) of practical soft skills methodologies that could be taken "off the shelf" and used by someone working in a role with young people. In creating these results, we wanted to develop youth work practitioners' confidence in delivering non-formal soft skills development opportunities, and in doing so, foster increased social inclusion of target groups of young people. Implementation Firstly, through a series of virtual collaboration events, Independent People youth workers / practitioners identified a long-list of 12 soft skills that were common to young people across the 3 different operating contexts of the partners. From this list, and with the co-production assistance of young people, we shortlisted to create a framework of 8 essential soft skills (result 1). Secondly, 2 teams of participants, worked on developing a soft skills passport (result 2) and a project website (activity bank) (result 3). The activities we implemented to achieve these results were virtual collaboration events, local activities, and the 3 learning / teaching / training activities (TLAs). The TLAs in Belgium, Sweden, and the UK were used to observe good practice in soft skills development within each partner, practice and evaluate soft skills development methodologies, and conduct work on the passport and website / activity bank. Over the lifetime of the project (18 months) the partners implemented 18 virtual coordinator meetings, 29 virtual collaboration events, 3 learning / teaching / training activities, 1 transnational partnership meeting, and a range of local activities (e.g., passport co-design, framework validation). Achievements The Independent People project produced 3 results (available in Swedish, Dutch, and English), which can be found on the ERASMUS+ Project Results Platform. R1) A common soft skills framework (8 skills: adaptability, motivation, reliability, responsibility, resilience, teamwork, problem-solving, communication) R2) A soft skills passport R3) An Independent People website with an activity bank of soft skills training resources for youth workers and practitioners The 3 partners have committed to continue adding resources to the activity bank after the project ends.