International Youth Exchange: Be the Change! nominated for the Austrian Youth Award 2017!

The International Youth Exchange "Be the change!", coordinated by FICE Austria in August 2016, was nominated from within a large number of projects as one of five outstanding projects in the category “Erasmus+ Youth in Action” for the Austrian Youth Award 2017 awarded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs and Youth (BMFJ).

In the award ceremony with the Minister for Family Affairs Sophie Karmasin on 19th November 2017 in the city hall of Vienna the five nominated projects will be presented and honored.

More than 50 young adults from 15 countries came together in this international youth exchange from 17th to 25th August 2016 in Vienna and shared their experience as Care leaver. The young adults who have been living in out-of-home care and are now in the transition to an independent life shared experiences, ideas, plans, hopes and dreams for the future and worked out together 10 standards for the transition to an independent life. The culmination of the youth exchange was the involvement in the 33rd FICE Congress und 2nd CYC World Conference: „Together Towards a Better World for Children, Adolescents and Families, a worldwide congress with more than 600 professionals and experts from the field of child and youth care. The young adults presented the 10 standards for Care Leaver in different sessions and held a workshop on the topic. FICE International and CYC-Net officially recognised the 10 standards and they are going to campaign for and to include them in their further documentation.

The project was coordinated by FICE Austria and supported by the EU Programme ERASMUS+, FICE International, FICE Switzerland, UNICEF Austria, the partner organisations and many other sponsors.