Partner Identification Form

Partner Information

A.2 — Legal representatives

Sempre a Frente Foundation is always represented by two board members, jointly.

Aleksandra Kulik Chairwoman of the Board aleksandra.kulik@sempre.org.pl

Marta Szczodrak Vice-President of the Board marta.szczodrak@sempre.org.pl

A.3 — Application Coordinator

Maciej Kwiatkowski Project Coordinator maciej.kwiatkowski@sempre.org.pl +48 792 104 410

Organisation & Activities

B.1 — Aims and activities

Sempre a Frente Foundation carries out programs in the area of prevention, psychological education and promotion of active citizenship for young people since 2010.

We mostly focus on:

• Strengthening psychosocial skills of young people
• Promoting and supporting mental health of children, youth, their families and youth workers
• Promoting the idea of voluntary work, entrepreneurship and democratic participation
• Developing psychosocial and vocational competences of adults

Through our actions we support children, youth and adults in personal development, building healthy lifestyle, we help them gain key competences. Using non-formal education we encourage young people to active social attitude and promote social responsibility, initiative, enterprise, volunteering. We help especially those with fewer opportunities, coming from difficult backgrounds and experienced with violence. We support youth active participation in social life by including them into the frames of structured dialogue.

We work mostly in 2 program sections:

• Youth Information and Development Centre
• Child Advocacy Centre

In our Centres we not only work with children and youth but also with their parents who are usually young, unemployed, single, with many different difficulties (such as violence, poverty, addictions etc.)

We also:

• Run Regional Information Point of Eurodesk Lublin
• Are a member of GAIN (coalition supporting volunteering projects of young people with fewer opportunities) and TUNE network (non-formal education in youth support through international projects)
• Co-created the National Coalition for Youth Work in Poland and National Coalition for Child Protection
• From 2022 we are Erasmus+ Youth Accredited organization.

As Youth Information and Development Centre we:

• conduct free consultations, psychosocial counselling and vocational trainings, interpersonal trainings, individual and group work for youth from schools and students from universities
• organize free workshops, information sessions, in the foundation and outdoor
• implement international education and prevention projects
• recruit for Internship/voluntary programmes for students and graduates
• organize regional, national and international trainings in working with difficult youth and their families with fewer opportunities

As Child Advocacy Centre we provide professional interdisciplinary support under one roof that is based on:

• psychosocial, therapeutic and psychiatric help for children and youth that experienced violence and trauma
• support of lawyers, social workers and psychologists for parents of the children in care of CAC
• cooperation and education for mental health specialists, social services workers and justice department institutions regarding mental health, wellbeing and protection of children and youth

In area of mental health promotion and psychosocial support of children and youth, we also conduct and coordinate several programs and projects:

• since 2020 we run psychoprophylaxis, mental health promotion workshops for young people from all high schools in Lublin, support groups for their parents/guardians and teachers (in cooperation with Municipality of Lublin, project : “Szkoła proMOCji Zdrowia Psychicznego”)
• since 2021 we run psycho-education workshops for students of primary schools and high schools from the whole region (project: “Przystanek Sempre. Wsparcie psychologiczne dla młodzieży”)
• we run 6th in Poland and 1st in the voivodeship Child Advocacy Centre in Lublin (opening in fall of 2022) - place providing interdisciplinary help and support for children and youth who experienced violence, trauma, crime, etc.
• we actively support Ukrainian refugees offering them psychological support we also co-created SPILNO Centre (UNICEF, Municipality of Lublin and 4 organization run) - integrational and supportive space for polish-ukrainian community in the city
• we cooperate with over 40 schools in voivodeship and 4 universities, we have also ongoing cooperation with regional Crisis Management Centre in Lublin and Psychological Support Centre EUROMEDICA
• we also coordinate and partner in many international KA2 partnerships, trainings and youth exchanges in the frames of Erasmus+ program but not only, supporting mental health of young people
• together with Homo Faber Association we have created volunteering system, standards and online platform for the city of Lublin

Since 2015 we coordinate regranting projects for young people where we support 10 different youth initiatives from the region per year. We implement projects such as the Academy of Local Animator and Youth Activator, in which we engage young people in educational and cultural programs, educating them on leaders activating and animating the local community of their cities, using their cultural heritage potential and cooperation with various entities and organizations related to creative development of their places of residence. Since 2021 we are a partner of big international project teaching young people to be young service designers that can change their environments and create innovations for the cities they live in. Those leaders can develop more in their future projects and can really make a change in the society.

We are the only one organization in Poland, which is a partner of Facebook in Digital Skills Program and Coca Cola Company in Youth Empowered Program, where we trained young people in area of digital skills and labour market. In both of the projects our target groups were NEETs: people under 30 yo., struggling on labour market. We prepared for them special workshops, trainings, internships and counselling.

In addition, in 2011-2024 we implemented variety of youth projects: international exchanges, trainings, local initiatives, social campaigns and happenings - over 50 projects, about 100 social campaigns and several KA2 projects.

We are actively engaged in the activities connected to subjects such as:

• civic and social participation of young people, EU values (we implement KA3 projects annually/now KA154, support youth initiatives, ESC solidarity projects of youth, youth exchanges) we were a part of partnership in European Youth Together Project Young Service Designers YSD: which aimed to train young people in service design methodology to create social innovations for better civic communities in the cities
• volunteering (local and international, since 2010, being a part of GAIN network supporting volunteerism of youth with fewer opportunities), we coordinate EYC 2023 program of volunteering in Lublin
• psychosocial skills of young people and youth workers (ongoing support for kids and youth in our Centres, annual trainings for youth workers)
• career advising and development of labour market competences (Coca-Cola Youth Empowered Program, local programs for NEET and unemployed students, youth exchanges such as: ‘PHOTO-I’ and ‘Boost Your Future’), digital skills (international projects such as: ‘Be Digital’, ‘PersOnlinelity’, ‘ImpacTV’; implementing Digital Skills Program with Facebook in the region). We have co-created the Competent app in the frames of the project Introduce Youthself, that helps young people create their First CV and get their competences endorsed by the teachers and youth workers they connected with.
• mental health (in 2020-2022 we run the prophylaxis program in Lublin high schools for students, parents and teachers, international projects such as Improve by move, Youth Development Groups)
• tolerance, antidiscrimination, antihate, inclusion (program for school students in Lublin ‘Nie-lekcje o nietolerancji’, “Szkoła dla wszystkich", youth exchanges such as ‘WeMen=Women’, ‘SenseArt’, ‘PersOnlinelity’, trainings such as: ‘Tolerance and respect in youth work’, ‘Violence- no thanks!’)
• eco, outdoor non-formal methods of work (projects like: “Down to Earth”, “Raising Eco Awareness” and monthly local activities for our youth groups merging survival and mental health)

The Foundation was the initiator of the pursue for the title of European Youth Capital 2023 in the contest of European Youth Forum and thanks to our actions with youth and City Council Lublin has won the title.

We are being rewarded for our work with and for youth:

• Medal of the 700th anniversary of the City of Lublin for contribution and commitment to its development and taking inspirational actions (2017)
• Medal of Lublin’s President for contribution and commitment in supporting youth engagement (2021)
• Eurodesk Award - Wawrzyn 2017 award for inspiring activity
• Eurodesk Award - Wawrzyn 2018 for activity and quality of information activities
• Eurodesk Award - Wawrzyn 2020 for information activity in pandemic reality
• Eurodesk Award - Wawrzyn 2021 for most spectacular success of the year
• Eurodesk Award - Wawrzyn 2022
• Good practice labels for our 3 projects in the Erasmus + Program: strategic partnership in the Youth Sector, youth exchange and European voluntary service project
• Nominations for the EDUinspiration Award 2018, 2019 and 2020, 2021, 2023 in the European Information for Youth category.

B.2 — Role of the organisation in the action

Our team members are very much experienced in the field of youth work, psychological support and mental health promotion as well as topics such as democracy and EU values and youth participation. Our experience and skills will be a valuable factor in increasing the quality of the variety of projects. We can contribute to project actions by organizing workshops, webinars, disseminating the results, promotion and information. We are experienced in conducting researches, creating educational and support programs, working in area of structured dialogue, mental health, creating social media content for the project purposes.

As our organisation has active partnership with over 40 schools in Lubelskie voivodenship, 4 Universities in Lublin, cooperates with Youth City Council, the City of Lublin Office, Marshal's Office of the province and every year, our activities involve approximately 4,000 young people from the region, we will have a wide access to the target group for all planned activities.

We will disseminate all project information through our networks and social media channels:

• As Eurodesk Information Point we will share project actions with other members nationally and internationally
• As PROM member we will be able to contact most of youth organizations working in the area of Poland
• As member of National Coalition for Youth Work and National Coalition for Child Protection
• As two of our board members are the part of Children and Youth Council working by Lublin’s President we will also share our network statements with the City officials
• As our chairwoman is a member of city’s public benefit activity council and member of Youth Affairs Council at the National Development Council working with President of Republic of Poland we cooperate with many decision makers on local and national level
• By our Sempre a Frente foundation Facebook Page we reach over 6000 persons and over 1000 followers on instagram
• By our Centrum Informacji i Rozwoju Młodzieży Facebook Page we reach over 2500 persons

Our Team

Aleksandra Kulik

Social psychologist, career advisor and trainer with 1,000+ hours of experience in psychoprophylaxis, soft skills and youth opportunities. Co-creator of Lublin EYC 2023 and the National Coalition for Youth Work.

Marta Szczodrak

Psychologist, vocational counsellor, psychosocial-skills trainer, and VCC trainer/examiner. Crisis-intervention specialist working mainly with young people and adults at risk of social exclusion.

Jagoda Idzik

Specialist in care and educational pedagogy, pedagogical therapy and oligophrenopedagogy. Trained in Motivational Interviewing (MINT standards); works as a youth-group therapist.

Agata Wiatr

Natalia Bartoszuk

Marcel Turski-Paprzycki

A fourth-year psychology student at UMCS, a youth worker, and an actor. He has extensive experience facilitating international youth exchanges and mentoring youth initiatives. He hones his training skills by leading workshops on theatrical improvisation and various forms of youth work.

Stanislav Kapitonov

Recent EU-funded projects