Today’s youth have been affected directly or indirectly by two (2) major crises in their lifetime by now; the economic crisis which peaked in 2013 and the ongoing COVID19 crisis which has disrupted every aspect of our lives having an immediate effect on young people’s employment, education, cultural expression, mental well-being, rights and social activism. Even before the pandemic, the social inclusion of young people was an ongoing challenge. In addition to poverty and unemployment, some of the reasons young people are excluded from equal participation to society are geographical obstacles, disability, racism, and gender discrimination. With the project ACT-ON, we want to offer to youth workers (youth workers, youth trainers/ facilitators, youth leaders, and mentors of European Solidarity Corps’ Volunteers) an opportunity for continuous professional development so as to support the young people reverse the effects of the pandemic. The project will provide youth workers with practical tools to use in their daily work when working in youth clubs, facilitating meetings with young people, delivering youth training at local workshops and international mobility projects, mentoring young people volunteering with the European Solidarity Corps (ESC) etc. The project partners are proposing methods from four creative themes to help young people with fewer opportunities develop the Key- Competences described by the Revised Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2018). The proposed themes are: 1. Lego Serious Play® methodology to support the youth to cultivate creativity and innovation, to develop and express innovative ideas, to develop problem- solving, communication and presentation skills. 2. Music Education as a path to positive youth development; and empowerment of youth (focus on migrant youth) to integrate into the society. 3. Drama; to enrich the creative development of youth, to foster their creative engagement and to develop problem-solving skills. 4. Photovoice; an empowering and flexible process that combines photography with social action. It will empower young people, including those who are facing the risk of social exclusion. The themes have been chosen based in the criteria: (a) interests of the young people in the partner organisations (b) potential of each field to influence the development of competences in terms of knowledge, skills, but also attitudes, (c) ease of access for all young people without requiring complex academic knowledge or expensive equipment. The partners will create two Intellectual Outputs (I.O) with methodologies from the above themes; I.O.2. ACT-ON PACKAGE OF CREATIVE RESOURCES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. I.O.3. ACT-ON TRAINING OF TRAINERS CURRICULUM. Methodology wise, our project is going to use non-formal learning, creative methods, arts, participatory methods, and intercultural dialogue approaches. Competence development will be reached at three levels which are essential for social inclusion; knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Formal education mainly focuses on knowledge while youth work with the proposed methodologies can be more effective in reaching learning outcomes that combine all the three levels. In the I.O.1. DESIGN RESEARCH REPORT ON YOUTH WORK FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION WITH CREATIVE METHODS the partners will follow the methodology of Design Research, which is borrowed by Educational Research. All the outputs will be freely available to the learners (youth professionals and young people) thought the I.O.4. the ACT-ON E-LEARNING PLATFORM which will provide technology enhanced learning (TEL) and an opportunity for the development of digital competences. Almost 300 youth professional working with young people with fewer opportunities in Cyprus, Greece, and Spain -of which appr. 19 are with fewer opportunities themselves- will participate in the project activities and the local sub-groups of stakeholders; they will complete the first Training of Trainers (ToT) where they will get to try the ACT-ON ToT Curriculum in each partner country; they will attend the dissemination workshops and the final conference. At least 1.200 youth professionals will benefit through dissemination and exploitation activities. These beneficiaries will be approached through traditional and social media at local, national and European levels but also with personal contact, meetings and workshops. Another 4.500 people will be approached through the project newsletters and social media. With the dissemination and exploitation activities, the involvement of the associated partners and an ongoing stakeholder dialogue, the partners will spread the findings of the research, the learnings, and the outputs of the project. They will reach out not only to the youth sector at practice, policy and management levels but also to the education and social care sectors. Finally, the project will impact the quality of youth work in the project countries and Europe.
The aim of the project was to offer to direct target group of youth workers (including youth trainers/ facilitators, youth leaders, and mentors of European Solidarity Corps’ Volunteers) an opportunity for continuous professional development in order to support the young people in competence development as a means to reverse the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. With this project, we wanted to achieve these Specific Objectives (SO): SO1 - To understand the depth and dimensions of the needs of Youth Workers for Professional Development. SO2 - To build on the partners' capacity to provide Professional Development Opportunities to Youth Workers. SO3 - To enable Youth Workers to use Creative Methods (1. Lego® Serious Play®, 2. Music, 3. Photovoice, 4. Drama), which are attractive to young with fewer opportunities in order to stimulate competence development. SO4 - To promote Competence Development of Young People with fewer Opportunities through the use of Creative Methods in Youth Work. SO5 - To create opportunities for youth workers, young people with fewer opportunities, and partners to cope with the impact of COVID-19.
The aim of the project ACT-ON was to offer to the direct target group of youth workers (including youth trainers/ facilitators, youth leaders, and mentors of European Solidarity Corps' Volunteers) an opportunity for continuous professional development so as to support the young people in competence development as a mean to reverse the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also wanted to tackle the attractiveness of youth initiatives to young people. We have chosen four creative themes as alternative tools for acquiring key competencies. For many young people with fewer opportunities, formal education and traditional youth work approaches have failed to deliver the learning outcomes required by today's societal challenges. We proposed creative/artistic methods because creativity attracts all young people regardless of their background or academic achievement. Moreover, these methods are rich in content and techniques without being over-complicated or requiring expensive equipment, and they can yield learning outcomes in regard to all the key competences.