Youth spend a considerable part of their day online, nowadays. Working with young people has transformed with generational change and pandemic. The generation Z of young people are basically raising in the virtual world hence the old tools for youth work may seem irrelevant or too slow for them. On the other hand, the pandemic has shown our unpreparedness of epidemiological or other types of crisis where working online is becoming the new normal. The zoom sessions and online meetings have been inseparable part of the youth work, but all of us have noticed how tiring it is for both youth workers and young people. Hence more innovative digital tools are necessary to promote the values of youth work, which will design more interactive, engaging and game tools to develop the competences of young people. The aim of the Strategic Partnership project "Digital Tools for youth work" (DiTo) is to rise quality of youth work through co-created innovative digital tools on designed platform to equip youth work(ers) and young people with know-how of digital tools what are based on real needs and opportunities. Project is cooperation between Tartu Youth Work Center from Estonia, Robotikos mokykla from Lithuania, Armavir Development Center from Armenia and EuroFRC from Poland. We believe that for creating effective innovative digital tools for youth work it is necessary to cooperate both international and nationally. The tools must be developed in the spirit of co-creation, where people from the IT field meet the youth workers and young people to address relevant problems via creative solutions. The project will promote a design thinking approach. Project outcome is Intellectual Output: Platform of innovative digital tools created during the project hackathons. Platform will function like resource bank of digital tools for ground level youth work. Project includes following activities: - Management activities like coordination, transnational project meetings and dissemination - Digitalization of Youth Work TC in Lithuania - Think for Youth Study Visit-Thinkathon in Armenia - Co-Creation of Intellectual Output (platform of digital tools) during whole project - Multiplier events, Final Conference Joint cooperation will lead to boosting creative potential of youth workers to develop youth work.
The aim of the project was to develop eight digital tools that facilitate and support youth work. The sub-objectives of the project were: - Creating and providing youth workers with the opportunity to use digital tools to carry out activities for youth. - Encouraging creative thinking among youth workers and youth through the development of digital skills and competences. - Integrate at least eight new digital tools in the youth field. - To motivate and inspire youth to take action at both local and national level, using their abilities, openness and ideas. - Strengthen international cooperation between different organizations in youth work.
The main need for the project arose from the COVID pandemic, during which a very large part of young people's lives moved to the digital world. Among them, youth work had to catch up. The existing tools had become tiresome for both the youth workers and the young people, and the youth workers had the idea of creating their own informal tools to use in youth work. Since there are already different platforms, the idea of the project was to use them and adapt them for use in youth work in order to create an opportunity for young people to learn and experience informally. The project was initiated at the international level, as it was seen that partners from different countries improve each other's knowledge. For example, the project partner from Poland works closely with IT students and the Lithuanian partner mainly works with the field of LTT, i.e., the fields of natural and exact sciences and technology.