‘DEAL II - Building employability skills through personal development’ is a long-term project proposal to be implemented in 2015-2016. This international initiative will gather 34 participants (youth workers, group leaders, educators, etc. working with unemployed young people) coming from 14 different countries: Poland, Malta, Turkey, Croatia, Italy, Latvia, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Greece, United Kingdom, Belgium and Bulgaria. The main aim of the project is to create a hub for employability and personal development tools, methods and practices to be used by those working with young people (in any capacity: formal, non-formal, vocational, etc.) so as to support them in pursing diverse career prospects. This will be achieved by: • Improving the participants’ competences required in facilitating personal and professional development of young people they work with • Providing space for sharing of experiences and good practices in the subject matter (here in particular: development of key life and employability skills) • Gaining first-hand experience in a number of personal and professional development tools • Empower participants in acting as multipliers so as to build up to the experience gained during the project and having it spread to relevant stakeholders afterwards • Exploring possibilities for future cooperation among participants and partner promoters engaged. Participation in the project will also be the opportunity to widen up partners international networks and to make steps in the development of some future activities around the topic of employability and personal development (both local and international ones). Methodology of the activities will be based on the principles of non-formal education such as experiential learning, cooperative learning, shared responsibility, etc. These will be enriched with numerous practical examples of projects that have brought about change and success in the subject area as well as meetings with the experts and practitioners in the field. The proposal has been thought through as a long-term project involving partners interested in further increasing their capacities within youth work and supporting personal development of young people and youth workers alike. In order to achieve better results and ensure their sustainability, the project is divided into three parts: - Activity 1: TRAINING COURSE - it will take place on 20-27.07.2015 in Worcester and will gather 34 youth workers willing to gain skills, knowledge and develop necessary attitudes related to supporting young people in working on their personal development and further increasing employability skills. The very training will be based on the principles of learning by doing where those attending will have the opportunity to step into the shoes of their learners and try out some of the personal and professional development tools upon themselves. This experience will be crucial when carried forward to the successive stages of the project. Finally, participants will benefit from the presence of external experts who will shed light on the latest developments within area such as: coaching, neurolinguistic programming, developmental psychology, etc. - Activity 2: PRACTICE - back home participants will have a few months to implement the new tools, methods, ideas, etc. learned during the training course. These could be used either with young people directly or further disseminated among those working with youth (teachers, trainers, job centre staff, etc.). Here, participants will be continually supported and, where applicable, coached by the trainers involved in the project. - Activity 3: CONSOLIDATION SEMINAR - it will take place on 11-17.07.2016 in Birmingham - date to be still confirmed - and will be aimed at both evaluating the achievements and challenges of the past months, as well as looking at the ways of improving human and organisational capacity building of young people and youth organisations through new and innovative personal development tools. Here, participants will have the chance to share their own experience of using the tools learned during the training course and propose new ones. Also, seminar is envisaged as a space for developing future partnerships among those involved. These will be based on the ideas already developed within the project lifetime.