Although many girls serenely navigate the transition to adulthood, many are not provided adequate support and opportunities to achieve their fullest potential. They live in a condition of exclusion because of their migrant background, because belonging to a disadvantaged family or for individual fragility and psychological patterns – and often for these factors combined. Their difficult socio-economic condition makes them ill-equipped to deal with the pressures around them, which in turn make them more likely to suffer from low-esteem, inactive lifestyles, bullying or to experience lower probabilities to attend a school suited to their attitudes. Gender bias often exacerbate their already difficult situations as they perpetuate stereotypes about acceptability of behaviours, interests, and roles for men and women. Within the extensive scientific literature on the multiple dimensions of social exclusion, little attention is paid to the “femaleadolescent” binomial aspects of such processes. At EU level there remains a need to create more, dedicated space for single-sex work with young women, especially those experiencing marginalization. Most projects focus on dealing with perceived problematic behaviour and educational deficiencies of young boys, while the remaining limited programming with girls emerges around their perceived potential victimhood, particularly those of early pregnancy, precocious sexuality and low self-esteem. Instead, little interest is given, within generic youth services, to actions focusing on empowerment,exploring gender equity, or interrogating heteronormative gender discourses. In this context, there is also an emerging socio-economic issue that should not be underestimated: the so called "gender digital divide", which is often based on theroles that provide the social expectations and shape the male or female use of technology. In already disadvantaged contexts, affordability, lack of education, as well as inherent prejudices and socio-cultur...

The project will explore ways to establish and enhance Private Sponsorship (PS) schemes in some Member States, in order to strengthen capacities at local level and improve refugee self-reliance. Experienced organisations will provide technical and operational support for planning and carrying out a PS pilot scheme, inspired by the community-based model as experimented in Portugal and by other kinds of civil society engagement already existing in other EU countries. The pilot project will develop new practices for achieving more efficient PS and scaling-up existing PS scheme, leading to better integration of sponsored beneficiaries. Thanks to study visits and desk research the project will gather and analyse information on good practices of community-based sponsorship in order to develop a green book on the implementation of such schemes addressed to families hosting refugees and organisations participating in the pilot phase. Involving families will greatly improve the efficiency of the integration process as it opens existing social networks. The project will develop mentoring and peer-to-peer activities between families and refugees to provide social and educational support throughout the settlement process. The project will facilitate access to the job market for refugees relying on the expertise of a network of social enterprises which will design tailored vocational training. To ensure the correct implementation of the project and establish the basis for future replicability, a monitoring system will be developed. Monitoring activities will gather crucial information needed to develop an evaluation system in order to assess the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of the project. In the short and medium term, the beneficiaries will be both the persons in need of protection located in partners’ countries and the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). In the long term, the institutions and European CSOs will benefit from the project’ stress on the enhanc...