Our Life. Our Voice. Yount people and poverty.

Project Results

From 2015 to 2017, young participants from 5 EU countries - Finland, Germany, Italy, Romania and the United-Kingdom - led investigations into youth poverty to draft their own proposals on how to tackle it.

These investigations were used to produce the project's Intellectual Outputs displayed below. You can also find in this section some other productions created by the young participants and project partners.

Intellectual Outputs

Presented in May 2017 during the project's Final Conference in Brussels, with a large audience composed of youth and social workers, young people, public and private stakeholders in the field of youth and representatives from the EU institutions, these Intellectual Outputs are based on the "Our Life. Our Voice" young participants' own investigation into poverty.

"Our Life. Our Voice" - An Investigation into Youth Poverty

From 2015 to 2017, "Our Life. Our Voice" young participants conducted their own investigations into youth poverty in their 5 home countries: Finland, Germany, Italy, Romania and the United-Kingdom.

This document, the project's first Intellectual Output, presents the activities implemented by each group and their results, highlighting the national similarities and differences identified by the young participants when it comes to youth poverty, and their detailed recommendations to tackle it at both national and EU levels.

"Ending Poverty and Social exclusion" - Young People’s Key Messages

These recommendations on how to tackle youth poverty at the EU-level stem from our young participants’ work. They are not exhaustive, but reflect the focus chosen by the young people while aligning as much as possible with their own words. They are a synthesis of the project’s first Intellectual Output.

The document can be downloaded here.

"How to engage young disadvantaged people" - Toolkit

During the "Our Life. Our Voice. Young People and Poverty" project, a wide range of activities and adapted methods were used to involve young people with fewer opportunities in an inclusive and participatory way.

Thanks to these methods, the project partners were able to empower the young participants in such a way that they contributed not only as a "target group", but as key actors of the whole project, from its design to its dissemination.

The project's third Intellectual Output, available here, presents the principles and detailed methods implemented in the project in a hands-on toolkit.

Additional Productions

During their investigations into youth poverty, the "Our Life. Our Voice" young participants and the project partners who supported them produced various, additional outputs to present their work.

Below you can find some of them, as well as videos and promotional material they prepared to disseminate the project's results.

Final Conference, Brussels, 4 May 2017

Each project partner organised various events - the so-called "multiplier events" - to disseminate the "Our Life. Our Voice" results while giving the young participants additional opportunities to express themselves at the local, regional and national levels. You can find out more about what partners organised in the "Blog" section.

This phase reached its climax at the EU level on 4 May, when the “Our Life. Our Voice . Young People and Poverty” Final Conference was organised in Brussels. As we celebrated their involvement in this two-year Erasmus+ project, the “Our Life. Our Voice” young participants coming from Finland, Germany, Italy, Romania and the United-Kingdom presented their work and results, highlighting the need to be more ambitious to tackle youth poverty across Europe.

More than a hundred participants from the youth and social field, the civil society as a whole, as well as local, national and European public authorities discussed these results with the young participants with very encouraging outcomes!

A full report on the Final Conference is available here. You can also have a look at the event's pictures on our Facebook page.

Video - The Children's Society Commission on Poverty (UK)

The "Our Life. Our Voice" project built upon a model established by the Children’s Society in the United-Kingdom: the Children's Commission on Poverty. Besides providing inspiration to the consortium, the Children's Society pursued the Children's Commission on Poverty's work during the project duration.

This video presents the inclusive methods used to involve children in this commission, as well as their different activities and recommendations.

Video - Fundatia Ruhama's presentation of "Our Voice. Our Life" (RO)

To present the overall project and its young participants' recommendations on how to tackle youth poverty at the EU level, Fundatia Ruhama produced a short animated cartoon, presented during all events at the end of the project.

Have a look at the video here!

Video - After Eight's methods and results in "Our Life. Our Voice" (FI)

To present the activities they implemented to investigate into poverty in their specific context, the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, the young participants from our project partner After Eight produced a short video, which also presents their ideas on how to tackle poverty.

You can have a look at their inspiring work here!

Magazine - Broke(n) by After Eight's group (FI)

Finland's young participants, with the support of our project partner After Eight, drafted, designed and published their own magazine, "Broke(n)".

This 50-pages magazine, besides presenting the project itself, the young participants' work and their own thoughts on youth poverty, gives a few hints and tips to young people in Finland to cope with a low budget, for instance cultural opportunities.

  • YES Forum
  • The Children’s Society, London, The United Kingdom
  • Cooperativa Zefiro, Lucca LU, Italy
  • Internationaler Bund, Frankfurt, Germany
  • After Eight, Jakobstad, Finland
  • Dynamo International, Brussels, Belgium
  • Ruhama Foundation, Oradea Jud, Romenia