The main issue addressed by the project is early school drop out and school drop out without concluding compulsory education.

The specific goals are the following:

• To promote the development of personal and social competencies with the goal of attaining school success among 65 children and youngsters aged between 6 and 18 years, both Portuguese and from immigrant and ethnic minority background (target group).
• To sponsor the development of study and learning methods among the target group members and to route them to schooling paths that can be an alternative to regular education.
• To inculcate the practice of occupational activities and sports among them in order to sponsor their socialization and integration.
• To provide psychological and social routing and support to employability among the youngsters and children, promoting simultaneously family and community interaction and raising awareness of citizenship principles.
• To teach the members of the target group to use new technologies, providing them with skills and competences in IT through recreational activities. Helping children and youngsters to do their homework and teach them how to elaborate a job application using new technologies are also goals of the project, as well as to train young people in IT and certify their skills.

The models behind the project are based on the development of a social intervention strategy based on the social, educational and economic reality of the municipality and also on community work. The project works in close cooperation with local associations, sports clubs, schools and NGOs in order to reinforce the follow-up of the members of the target group and their continuous psycho-social training. Implementation of recreational and pedagogic activities considering the principles of inclusion by the arts, intercultural dialogue and digital inclusion are also part of the rationale behind the project.

The target population comes from social and economic excluded environments with a behaviour leading to growing social exclusion. It includes Portuguese children with or without an immigrant and ethnic minority background. The foreseen coverage of the project was initially 214 participants and has now reached 297 participants.

A base line study was made by the local authorities (Vila Real de Santo António municipality) and a report on the “Social and demographic contextualization of the juvenile dynamics in Portugal”. The base line study was conducted in the scope of the Social Network mainly among the entities belonging to the consortium. Awareness raising among children, young people and their relatives achieved by their direct participation in the activity plan.

Until December 2011 the total number of participants was 619. The final implementation rate is 292. The target group is composed of youngsters who were followed-up by a previous project dealing with early school drop out and routing to alternative projects of training and also by young people not integrated in the education system, youngsters who are absent from school or without the minimum schooling. Also included in the project are young people who are or were under punitive-educational measures and youngsters without an occupation (either school or professional).

This project is essential in its complementarities with other social intervention projects, reinforcing the articulation among the participants in the social network. Each element of the target group has a closer contact with the network of support and a better support to solve the problematic situations that may arise. Thus, the project gives a solid contribution to fight down social exclusion.

The evaluation performed is based on presence sheets, daily reports, number of participants, follow-up reports and psycho-social reports, intermediate evaluation and the number of cases being followed-up.

The project has been very successful in terms of the number of young people it has reached and who regularly take part in the activities. The school success has increased among the children and youngsters who benefit from the project. The recommendations include the setting up of good evaluation instruments and indicators in order to do the proper follow-up of the socialization process of the target population. The not so positive aspects are the difficulty to quantify the quality of the fieldwork being developed by the team and the lack of resources to provide a response to the huge needs resulting from the social context of the municipality.

100% of the funding comes from the Programa Escolhas (Choices Programme) and all the items of the budget were used. The budget for 2010 was €57,160. The team is composed of one coordinator, one cultural animator, one monitor and four monitors for non-permanent activities.