Erasmus + provides grants for a wide range of actions and activities. Among others:

• Opportunities to study, train, gain work experience or volunteer abroad.
• Education, training and youth sector staff to teach or learn abroad.
• The development of digital education and the use of ICTs.
• Language learning.
• Recognition of skills, including those learned outside the formal education system.
• Strategic Partnerships among educational institutions and youth organisations with peers in other countries in both their own sector and other sectors, in order to foster quality improvements and innovation.

• Knowledge Alliances and Sector Skills Alliances, to address skills gaps and foster entrepreneurship by improving curricula and qualifications through cooperation between the worlds of work and education.
• A loan guarantee facility for master’s degree students to finance their studies in another country.
• Teaching and research on European integration.
• Exchanges, cooperation and capacity building in higher education and the youth sector worldwide.
• Initiatives to foster innovation in pedagogy, and progressive policy reform at national level through Prospective Initiatives.

More than 4 million young people, students and adults will gain experience and skills by studying, training or volunteering abroad through Erasmus+.

The programme will also support over 125,000 institutions and organisations to work with peers in other countries to innovate and modernise teaching practice and youth work. Together they will help ensure that young people and adults get the skills they need to succeed in today’s world.

Funding for youth activities under Erasmus+ aims to improve the key competences, skills and employability of young people, promote young people’s social inclusion and well-being, and foster improvements in youth work and youth policy at local, national and international level.

Concretely in the field of youth, the Erasmus+ programme offers three main opportunities:

• Key Action 1: mobility opportunities for young people and youth workers. Young people have the opportunity to participate in youth-exchanges or to volunteer for a period up to one year in another country. Youth workers can take part in training and networking activities abroad or spend some time in a youth organisation abroad for a job shadowing or an observation period.

• Key Action 2: opportunities for cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices. Organisations can apply for funding to work in partnership with organisations from other participating countries. The projects funded under this action will focus on sharing, developing and transferring innovative practices in education, training and youth provision between participating countries.

• Key Action 3: opportunities to support policy reform. The Erasmus+ programme will fund strategic activities supporting policy reform across the EU. Funding opportunities in the field of youth under this action can take the form of meetings between young people and decision makers.

Erasmus+ projects are submitted and managed by participating organisations representing the participants.

Thus, in the frame of Key Action 1, for example, applications under this action cannot be made by individual students, staff or volunteers. People wishing to participate in an activity will need to contact one of the organisations receiving support from the Erasmus + programme.

Therefore, applicants are organisations active in the fields of education, training and youth from the participating countries. Some actions of the programme are also open to informal groups of young people.

The actions of the Erasmus + programme are divided into decentralised actions and centralised actions.

• The decentralised actions are managed in each programme country by National Agencies that are appointed by their national authorities.

• The centralised actions are managed at a European level by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) located in Brussels. EACEA is in charge of the complete life-cycle management of projects, from the promotion of the programme, the analysis of the grant requests, the on-the-spot monitoring of projects, up to the dissemination of the projects’ and programme’s results.

• Erasmus+ website
• EACEA website
• National agencies for Erasmus+