Marketing is an issue that is gaining more and more importance in NGO activities. Limited resources, lack of financial liquidity and the social nature of the work of the members of the organization force us to broaden our own horizons and acquire new necessary skills to implement these issues. Regardless of the organization’s profile or area of activity, each organization needs to implement marketing efforts to reach even more audiences and attract new, valuable collaborations. We want to create a project that will enable youth employees to obtain skills to facilitate their daily life in the organization, strengthen the position of NGOs in the market, and enable them to establish beneficial business partnerships. In addition, gaining knowledge of how to lead in social media and learning the appropriate tools for this will enable NGOs to connect with their audiences – young people, engage them actively in activities, facilitate knowledge sharing and dissemination of achieved results. Thanks to the tools learned, NGOs will be able to make the ways of working with young people more attractive during their further operation. Many tools are so versatile that they can be used to conduct workshops or any other activities, including integration during subsequent projects. Promotional activities, marketing are areas increasingly gaining importance in the activities of NGOs – getting sponsors, attracting volunteers or attractive international partners. The lack of financial liquidity and the social nature of the work of the organization’s members force NGO staff to implement marketing efforts. The main reason is the popularity of social media channels and the opportunities they conceal. Thanks to them we can attract partners, sponsors, but also volunteers – who are often the youngest group of our audience, perfectly familiar with social media and its tools. We want to open up to new opportunities, gain new competencies and skills, while easily gaining new audiences. To this end, we decided to engage a trainer – Social Media Manager, with many years of experience. Thanks to him, participants will be able to gain knowledge in text editing and creating posts and newsletters. Participants will also gain knowledge in advertising, marketing, using social media as a tool to attract sponsors. They will gain digital skills, while operating programs: Canva, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, mobile apps for social media (InstaStories). Participants will learn new methods to gain an audience of social media channels and actively promote the NGO using the potential of Facebook and Instagram at the local, national, international level. With the support of the trainer, the participants will organize the messages of strategy, mission and vision of the organization. We are aware that the project will not only affect our target group of youth workers, but also our audience and those who cooperate and contribute to our organizations. The knowledge and good practices we will gain can be passed on to our volunteers, which will improve the quality of our work with youth. By developing the digital skills and creativity of the participants – youth workers – we will not only influence the appearance of our social media and advertising, but also develop a sense of flexibility and adaptation to changing working conditions. All activities during the project will use non-formal education tools and techniques. Thanks to the project, it will be possible to nurture international cooperation and exchange of good practices, as well as the principle of “lifelong learning” and qualification improvement, and social integration, thanks to the involvement of participants with no age limit in the project. In addition, the project will make it possible to raise the competencies of people with fewer opportunities – geographical, economic, social, health, cultural limitations – thanks to the involvement of these people in the project. The project will also make it possible to raise language competencies, thanks to the use of English as the leading language during activities. An additional benefit of the project is to build an increased sense of cultural diversity while nurturing and spreading one’s own culture, and to increase the sense of an active citizen attitude. Spreading a good reputation for the Erasmus+ program as an opportunity available to everyone, a program that improves skills and enables contact and cooperation in an international circle will also be an additional asset of the project.

In addition, the organization’s ability to recruit and attract new volunteers, as well as employees, will be enhanced by the change in its image. The project is aimed at young people working in all partner organizations. The members of the organization are young people. They are the direct participants of the project. Youth employees are the people who make up the community of their organization. In addition, they are people involved in volunteer and development activities in the local and international sphere.

Project Objectives:

• Increase the knowledge of project participants in the field of social media;
• Supporting programs: Canva, Lightroom, Instagram Stories app and other free apps and tools to improve video, photo processing and social media handling;
• Increase the level of digital skills and creativity among participants;
• Increase the level of knowledge in word processing and knowledge in newsletter creation;
• Increase the level of knowledge in advertising and marketing and sponsorship acquisition;
• Reconstructing knowledge of the organization’s mission and vision and building awareness of its activities;
• Developing methods for surveying audience needs – each organization will conduct a survey of the needs of its audience;
• Improving the quality of youth work;
• Exchanging experiences related to the promotion of the organization’s activities in comparison with other participating countries;
• Each partner organization will develop a plan for social media activities and prepare the necessary materials for it;
• Increase the level of cooperation with young people by making the prepared materials and activities more attractive;
• Developing and nurturing international cooperation – creating a plan for joint activities in the future through social media;
• Involving and enabling people with fewer opportunities (social, geographic, economic, cultural, health constraints) to improve their skills;
• Skills will be acquired and developed through non-formal education tools;
• Increased opportunities for recruitment of employees and volunteers of the organization;
• Exploration of cultural diversity in partner organizations’ countries;
• Exchange of experience on the impact and operation of social media channels in all partner countries;
• Conducting training on the CANVA tool for youth in each partner country;
• Disseminate content encouraging young people to participate and the benefits of Erasmus+ projects;
• Each partner organization will conduct a recruitment of new volunteers – obtaining min. 2 new volunteers by each organization;
• Active participation of youth workers;
• Exchange of good practices;
• Dissemination of the idea of lifelong learning and qualification.