"Creativity for Digital Communities" is a strategic partnership project that will bring together youth workers from Estonia, Slovakia, Greece and Spain. It will enable 30 youth workers to participate in the training activities which will improve the skills that are needed for them to be successful in digital youth work. Throughout this process, guidelines will be created that will enable the involved organisations to train more youth workers to carry out higher-quality digital activities. These materials will also be introduced during the local seminars to help youth workers from outside of our own network and facilitate discussions on the topic of digital youth work. Various creative mediums and non-formal methods will be used throughout all the activities. Each organisation will offer their unique professional expertise to create a complete package of skills and knowledge. There will be two international training activities that complement each other. One about marketing and creativity in Spain is meant to help participants raise awareness about their activities among young people and reach out to a larger audience. The second training in Estonia will focus on digital tools, games, challenges and other activities for online community management. The key objective is to help the youth workers counter the negative impact that the global pandemic has had on the youth sector and seek digital alternatives to their usual activities. In order to coordinate the work, each organisation is also sending two youth workers to a transnational kickoff meeting and the final meeting. During these occasions, youth workers will evaluate the impact of this project, plan various activities together and make further improvements in the work. All transnational activities involve team-building and social program which strengthens the bond between the participants. The project will also help the involved organisations become a more effective network and create an international youth workers community. During the dissemination phase, the results of this project will be made available on the web platform of our network. With more than five thousand monthly visitors, we will be able to spread the result to a wider audience and raise awareness about different digital youth work possibilities. In order to improve the sustainability of this project, the created materials will be updated every 6 months to make sure that the youth workers will always have the most relevant digital tools available to them.
We wanted to do a few important things with this project. First, we aimed to train youth workers so they could be really good at doing their activities online. We focused on two main areas: how to market and be creative online, and how to use digital tools to build strong online communities. Second, we wanted to make some guidelines. These would help not just us but other organizations to know the best ways to work with young people online. Third, we hoped to get more people talking about digital youth work. That's why we organized local seminars in each country involved. We wanted to share what we learned and hear other points of view. Last but not least, we wanted our organizations to get better at working together and with others. We wanted to share our learnings far and wide and make a bigger impact, not just in our local communities but also in international projects. So, in simple terms, we wanted to help youth workers get better at what they do, share what we learn, and create a community that supports each other, all with the goal of making a positive impact on young people's lives.
We applied for this project because we saw a real need to improve how youth work is done in the digital world, especially since the pandemic made online activities super important. Youth workers were struggling to adapt to all the changes, and we wanted to help them catch up and even get ahead. Firstly, there was a clear need for better skills in areas like online marketing, creativity, and community-building. We wanted youth workers to be able to reach young people more effectively, even when they can't meet face-to-face. Secondly, we noticed that the impact of international projects like youth exchanges wasn't as strong as it could be. There was a missed opportunity to keep young people engaged after these events. We aimed to address this by teaching youth workers how to create and maintain online communities. Lastly, the project also aimed to help organisations like ours. By becoming better at digital activities, we can reach more people and make a bigger impact. Plus, by working together with organisations from other countries, we can learn from each other and get better at what we do.