Our project aims to innovative research and to uncover the structures and patterns as well as lists and scales of values by young people in Slovakia and the Czech Republic with a focus on differences and specificities of young people in youth organizations. This innovative approach help to identify the values grounds of nowadays youth, individual young people and group values identities and patterns among selected youth work activities. These findings set the ground for deepening and enriching the evidence-based discussions about young people in general and youth work and its impact and quality as well. Based on these research findings we strive for broader social and expert recognition and validation of youth work in the fields of values, values transfer on young people and empowering the role of values in youth work and the society in general. Based on this "values screening" among young people and selected youth organizations from the Czech Republic and Slovakia further promotion of values in education and society can take place. Values in general in pedagogy, education as well as psychology have a role as "a compass" for individuals and their behavior and actions, that is why they deserve our focus and attention in our nowadays interdependent, global and democratic societies especially. Youth work is value based since its nature, and concerning youth organizations, it is one of the most significant added benefits of such institutionalization of youth work. But in the Slovak and Czech context, the recent and past discussions were more focused on skills and skills development rather than the whole educational integration with our project we try to turn the wheel in the discourse and to remain the importance of the values in youth work, education, and society. Our project thus researches the values of nowadays youth generation and the values profiles of young members of 15 carefully selected youth organizations representing the broad spectrum of youth work from big to small organizations, from the traditional youth organizations, Christian to secular or those focused on international dimensions of life and youth mobility. For the research, we choose an innovative approach reflecting not only traditional steps which need to be done in proper social research as theory and other research reviews and integration, but we also include the experience and expertize of youth work and youth organizations and their values´ tools and documents. After creating thus an innovative research questionnaire, representative samples of youth generation in both participating countries will be interviewed as well as asked within 15 participating youth organizations from both countries as well. This provides a solid, representative and reliable data basis for robust data analysis using various scientific and analytical methods. As results several evidence reports will be created for further use, on the general youth populations, comparing them in both countries, showing the profiles of young people in the youth organizations and showing how the young people in various youth organizations differentiate each other and to general youth and what they have in common in the context of personal, social and cultural values. Based on this innovation and strengthening the evidence-based approach in the Youth sector, the youth councils and youth organization can better fit and reconsider based on new facts their activities and methods in youth work, young people´s recruitment into youth work activities, but also in advocacy and lobbying activities in politics and youth policy. To spread our research findings and the benefits and specifics of the youth work toward the whole youth work and youth policy environment in our countries, as well as to broader public and media, we also focus on developing innovative public engagement Infotainment tools and actions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. We will use cutting edge tech and art tools to enhance the factors of information delivery, fun, sensual triggering and emotional learning by the consumers and participants. This would be our contribution to experimenting with the new digital youth work and post-modern P.R. actions enhancing the interactive dialogue of the online world and offline individual learning. Our approach, outcomes, data, and tools will be available for others to enable the transferability of our work and the long-lasting impact of our project. Setting this basis for the methodology, we can start to create a time series as well or welcome other countries using our tools and broaden the comparative perspective of our research.
To that end our aim was to research selected values of young people in Slovakia and the Czech Republic with the focus on finding patterns of commonalities and differences between the countries that were once unified in a federation. Additionally, our aim was also to compare the values of general youth population with those of young people who are active in youth organizations. This innovative approach helped us to deepen and enrich our understanding of the importance of youth work. With the help of these findings we aimed innovate youth work, and to increase recognition and provide foundation for evidence-based discussions about youth policy and young people in general. By raising these important issues we further aimed to promote the importance of values in education and society in general and what crucial role do youth organisations play in this process. When speaking about values, our study focused on a few key areas: the main values overview was provided by Schwartz conceptual framework of values. Additionally we looked at values connected to democracy and trust, prosocial behaviour, participation and engagement, self-efficacy, gender equality and topics which continuously evoke heated discussions in our society.
Youth work is value based by its nature. When it comes to youth organisations we believe it is one of the most significant added benefits of institutionalized youth work. In the Slovak and Czech context, the recent and past discussions about youth work were more focused on skills and skills development rather than the principles. With our project we try shift the discourse and draw attention to the importance of the values in youth work, education, and society n general and highlight the positive role youth work does in this aspect. There were no available data in our respective countries that would help us advocate either of that and thus we decided to apply for this grant.