Youth Included

About us

Ekaterina Kokkalou together with her colleagues co-founded migrant youth organization Youth Included, aimed to support the process of integration for migrant youth through empowerment, education and talent development. Youth Included was founded in 2012 as an open platform for youngsters, a place where you are heard, cherished and supported, an open space for new ideas and initiatives. During all these years we were dedicated to this idea and enlarged the scale of events and courses basing on the needs of Prague community and using the pool of skillset of talented migrants. We work in cooperation with European union funds and City council of Prague.

Mission
We are committed to support, advice, guide and educate youth by giving them a chance to develop and organise the project of their dream, by providing them opportunities to volunteer and experience other cultures, by showing them that changing the World starts with small steps of self-exploring, self-respecting, self-development and self-expressing.

Activities
Our activities are aimed at supporting social integration and improving the socioeconomic ecosystem of the community by supporting migrants and refugees through a large scale of variable courses and workshops.
We provide language courses, professional requalification courses in different areas including IT, media and art. The variety of initiatives we do locally is huge, ranging from summer camps for kids to online singing lessons, from mental health support groups to felting workshops and seminars on improving one's CV.

Our projects:
The programs we conduct are mainly funded by the grants either from European Union, City council of Prague or the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic. A project is a system of events aimed at resolving a specific social issue of an identified target group taking into consideration the economic, social and cultural contexts.
• Youth4Development: Encouraging young people from vocational schools and universities to actively engage in community life by developing their advocacy skills in a way that reflects and implements the principles of the New European Bauhaus (NEB), while strengthening their trust in EU values.
• Club for Loving Mothers: Creation of a community for the mothers in need, that helps vulnerable women manage the day-to-day activities and help solve challenging circumstances of their lives
• Fotovýstava Příběhy Prahy 14: Community building through the use of arts. Exhibition aimed to capture the ordinary life moments of this neighbourhood by migrant amateur and professional photographers, event was accompanied by a jazz music concert.
• IN-CREATE: Cultivating creative expression as means to promote social inclusion and community cohesion between third country nationals. Project focuses on visual art, literature, theatre, creative writing, film, and photography.
• Together with City Council: Helping migrants and refugees from Ukraine (women and children) to integrate into Czech society much faster and easier. Creation of a community for people who now need our support and participation.
• Youth Included Project: Initiatives oriented on community building, mental support and social engagement by providing creative outlets and safe space for migrants. Courses and lectures on photography and improvisational theatre.
• EDEEY: Creation of the community with a main focus on Digital and Social Entrepreneurship for the young migrants. Offline course including seminars and mentoring programs, but also online learning platform.
• Out of the box society: A platform for networking and realisation of socio-cultural initiatives of third country nationals, easing the economical and social integration, fostering the healthy attitude towards oneself and educating on different skills.
• MAX: Changing public attitudes towards migrants through the natural artistic expression, storytelling and creation of positive messages for the media and dialogic encounters between locals and newcomers.
• and much more

Mgr. Ekaterina Kokkalou is the Founder of Youth Included.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.