The year 2020 will be historically known as the COVID-19 year of great pandemic. The whole world shut down for a few months and even when the lockdowns and curfews were lifted, our societies have witnessed a notoriously change. In some ways, the effect of this pandemic will be temporary until a cure has been found, but for some fields the pandemic has been a turning point that will condition and modify their procedures. This is as well the advantage since it challenges had made us and our work more flexible and created the offers outside of our regular working plan. During the lockdown, resources dedicated to youth had to readapt themselves in order to continue offering services to their users, youngsters. In this case, we can say that fortunately we live in the tech and internet era, and we were able to use it in our favour. The applicant with the youth centre which it is running decided to continue their agenda of activities virtually, using popular platforms, and asking and listening constantly to the youngsters what kind content they would enjoy. This is a method used from the open youth work methodology where local and small activities in youth centers are designed in accordance with the needs and wishes of youngsters. Concurrently, the applicant together with the Romanian partner and other European organizations, created the International Virtual Youth Centre platform, where a diverse profile of people related with youth would upload audio-visual content with the goal of entertaining and educating at the same time youngsters from all over Europe. Among the partnership of six different European organizations dedicated to the youth field, the ongoing project wants to continue this beta project that started during the lockdown, explore new realities due to COVID-19 and innovate in the methods on the implementation of a virtual youth centre in Europe. We want to create a platform where the youngsters can find the offer and resources that they also find in the physical youth centre, with constant accessibility to their referents, the youth workers. In this project the main target group and participants coincide - for we will ask them what they need and wish, will participate in the creation of content and then will become a beneficiary of this new tool. Also we want the youth workers to improve their vision about the changes that COVID-19 raised on the youth and increase their skills on media content, doing a training activity which will be applied separately and who focus will be on the instant media presentations, creations of videos, processing and postprocessing. The project will create three intellectual outputs - IO. The first one will be a survey to fifteen youngsters active in organizations daily work in every partner country, with which we want to collect the needs and changes caused by the virus and answers on what kind of platform and audio-visual content they would like to have. The second one, will be the mentioned webpage/platform and the creation of specific audiovisual content from each of the partners and in accordance with IO1. And as a third and closing intellectual output we want to create a digital handbook, that will gather the results of the survey and the experiences on the platform from every partner, its youth workers and young people. In order to achieve these objectives and results, we target a project duration of 24 months (March 2021 to March 2023). For a successful accomplishment of our milestones and discussions, we will have five transnational meetings in the different countries besides a monthly steering online meeting. Moreover, once the third intellectual output is finished, we plan to do a multiplier event in each of the partners’ countries in the format of a symposium so we can disseminate the results, share experiences and motivate other youth organizations to follow our steps.
Through the project activities implemented, we explored the reality of young people and youth workers after the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic to discover their real needs and interests, to adapt the programmes of our youth centres to them and to make use of new digital tools and practices to promote youth engagement, despite the limitations of the period. Improving the accessibility of open youth work offers (especially in contexts where centres are not present or difficult to reach), networking with young people from other countries, youth workers, NGOs and youth centres was one of the project’s main objectives, which through the tools and practices developed has been fully achieved. We found concrete solutions to young people's need to meet, connect and socialise. When the pandemic challenged everything, we needed creative and innovative solutions to adapt to a constantly changing world and continue to offer services, activities and spaces. The creation of a sustainable online platform and digital SM strategies to promote international cooperation between partners, create constant offers for young people and foster interaction and involvement of young people was one of the most important achievements of the project.
This project arose in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and the challenges youth work faced at that time, with the aim of adapting youth work offers to the new situation. The pandemic and the measures taken affected many segments of the lives of young people and the work of our NGOs, during and after the pandemic. This situation forced us to adapt and change the procedures and content of youth work. With this project we developed new methods and tools to increase the digital pedagogical skills of youth workers and our NGOs, to implement online learning and to offer more accessible content to young people in our area and internationally. We have strengthened the link between young people, youth workers and our youth centres through our achievements. The creation of a safe virtual space where young people can meet, socialise and create was a vital need for the consortium, but especially for the young people we work with, who have been severely affected by the pandemic. In the areas where we are active, it is often only our NGOs that offer safe places and spaces for discussion and growth. That is why finding solutions to realise sociality even in times of pandemic was and is a top priority for our NGOs.