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Why Youth Work Is Good

2018-3-HR01-KA205-0601332018Strategic Partnerships for youthfinalized
Countries: HR|EL|BG|PL|ES|SI · Grant: €66,396.15
Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)Inclusion - equityICT - new technologies - digital competences

Project summary

Needs of young people (further YP) are constantly changing and youth work (further YW) and youth workers has to be able to adjust themselves and their programs to these changes. In last year’s use of digitalization are growing unstoppable. The main users of these technologies are YP who are attracted to digital content and less and less interested in “ordinary” or we can even say old approaches in YW. This means that we also need to embrace digitalization and use their tools/options to attract, include and motivate YP. On other side with using more and more digital technology YP are more alienated from each other and some of them are even in risk of social exclusion. That’s why our needs are same, notably embracing digital technology and learning how to use it, how to make content/program for youth and how to motivate YP to be included in lifelong learning, active and socialized. MAIN project OBJECTIVE is: Increased capacity to work with youth and reinforce cooperation with partners from other countries through exchange of good practice in youth work and learning from each others. In order to achieve our objective we will use 3 short term joint training's for partner’s staff. On each training, every partner will send 2 representatives which are or will be focused in their organization of YW area/approach that is the topic of current training. Based on that, this project will include minimum 12 and maximum 36 different persons – youth workers / partner’s staff. Beside youth workers we will directly include in project 200 young people through 18 youth work events in 6 countries. Main activities of the project will be: - A1/M1 Preparation activities - during which we will have kick-off meeting, set agreements, divide task and responsibilities and deal with logistical and visibility tasks. - A2 Analysis of national framework for youth work – considers analyze of all framework / possibilities that youth work is functioning and prepare a thorough presentation / report to other partners on training events. Goal is to absorb and learn how things are functioning in different countries. - C 1-3 Implementation of 3 training – each training have its topic / focus but they all are focused on sharing and developing methods / approaches for inclusion of marginalized youth. - A3 Preparation & production of tangible outputs – Here we will work on production of motivational movie from the records that we collect on training and also production of draft version of youth work workbook. - M2 Second partners meeting – here we will evaluate achieved, comment created outputs and update it if necessary. Also we will prepare ourselves for dissemination activities. - A4 Dissemination – understands implementation of 12 youth work events in period of 4 months based on created tangible outputs. - M3/A5 Final evaluation – considers last project team meeting on which we will analyze our achievements and prepare final report. Based on this expected results are: - Increasing capacities of partner organization for youth work; - Increase competences of participants / youth workers; - Creation of 2 motivational video / movie; - Creation of a workbook; - Transferred / used partners example of good practice; - Implemented 18 youth work events. Impact that project will envisage on specific groups are: Participants: improved competencies and experience in provision of youth work and opportunities for marginalized young people, improved multi-cultural and inter-cultural competencies through international partnerships and participation on international events. Participating organisations: improved competencies, professionalism, project development and management, methods / approaches and tools to work with young people. Target groups: better / more interesting approach to young people, innovations in attracting and inclusion young people in non-formal and informal learning, increased social inclusion of marginalized young people, increased level of motivation for volunteerism and participation in community, more youth using the services of partner organizations Potential long term benefits are: Impact on community at large through increased number of socially included young people, number and scope of activities produced in local or regional community in which we are including all sectors and then all sectors contribute to development of youth work and inclusion of young people.

Final report summary

Needs of young people (further YP) are constantly changing and youth work (further YW) and youth workers has to be able to adjust themselves and their programs to these changes. In last year’s use of digitalization is growing unstoppable. The main users of these technologies are YP who are attracted to digital content and less and less interested in “ordinary” or we can even say old approaches in YW. This means that we, who work with them, also need to embrace digitalization and use their tools in order to attract, include and motivate YP. On other side with using more and more digital technology YP are more alienated from each other and some of them are even in risk of social exclusion. That is why in this case needs of YW and YP are same, notably embracing digital technology and learning how to use it, how to make content/program for youth and how to motivate YP to be included in lifelong learning, active and socialized. Based on that our project MAIN OBJECTIVE was: Increased capacity to work with youth and reinforce cooperation with partners from other countries through exchange of good practice in youth work and learning from each other’s. Cornerstone for achieving our objective was implementation of 3 short term joint training's for partner’s staff. On each training, every partner have send 2 representatives which are or focused in their organization of YW area / approach. Based on that, this project have include 32 YW / partner’s staff. Beside YW we have directly include in project 120 young people through 8 dissemination events in 4 countries. Main activities of the project was: - A1/M1 Preparation activities - during which we had kick-off meeting in Bulgaria. There we sign agreements, divide task and responsibilities and prepare for first logistical and visibility tasks; - A2 Analysis of national framework for youth work – By late spring we started analyze of all partner countries national framework’s / structure for YW; - C 1-3 considered implementation of 3 training’s – each training had his topic / focus that is described in other part of final report. We used training’s also for sharing examples of good practice as well as presentations of situations regarding YW structures in 2 country per training; - A3 Preparation & production of tangible outputs – Here we have worked creation and production of 2 movie’s from the records that we collect through interviewing different type of people as well as records from dissemination activities; - M2 Second partners meeting – here we have checked the movies what are finished and give instructions for those who didn’t finish it and we did the same for examples of good practice. In addition, we were preparing ourselves for dissemination activities. - A4 Dissemination – Due to situation COVID-19, we managed to implement 8 of planned 12 dissemination activities in period of last 4 months of project duration. Activities that was planned for end of February and whole March and April have been canceled; - M3/A5 Final evaluation – considers last project team meeting that we held it on line as it was impossible to travel abroad for any of the partners due to COVID-19 situation. Discussions and evaluations that was planned to be implemented on TPM3 we manage in larger part to finish on on-line meeting. Results that we have achieved are: - Increased capacities of partner organization for youth work; - Increased competences of participants / youth workers; - Created two video / movie; - Created one good practice examples workbook; - Transferred / used partner’s example of good practice; - Implemented 8 dissemination events. Impact that project have envisaged on specific groups were: Participants: improved competencies and experience in provision of youth work and opportunities for young people with fewer opportunities, improved multi-cultural and inter-cultural competencies through international partnerships and participation on international events. Participating organizations: improved competencies, professionalism, project development and management, methods / approaches and tools to work with young people. Target groups: better / more interesting approach to young people, innovations in attracting and inclusion young people in non-formal and informal learning, increased social inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities, increased level of motivation for volunteerism and participation in community, more youth using the services of partner organizations. Potential long-term benefits are: Impact on community at large through increased number of socially included young people, number and scope of activities produced in local or regional community in which we are including all sectors and then all sectors contribute to development of youth work and inclusion of young people.

Project partners (6)