The vision of project "Youth Escape COVID" is: to create a highly innovative non-formal educational method & tool using culture as a foundation in this endeavor, while the scope of the project is: to combat the negative effects of COVID-19 pandemic on youth in Europe in a creative and innovative way. Through our project proposal we contribute to the development of youth work tools that can address a multitude of issues (i.e., employment, active participation, foster creativity, sustainable development, social inclusion through the arts, enhance digital skills, foster entrepreneurship, boost creative domains). There has been some positive initiatives in offering digital youth work and increasing use of digital tools in working with young people but this has had its limitations due to: IT tools availability, knowledge of practitioners in youth work. However the majority of young people, including disadvantaged young people problems have deepen, leaving many to face on their own issues related to social exclusion, discrimination and a redefinition of social and safety nets. There are also questions about changing relationships and behavior, changing perspectives on connection to friends and community, impact on well-being and mental health, employment, participation, activism, youth organisations and many other areas of young people’s lives according to EU-Council of Europe. Project objectives are: Ob.1 Providing innovative non-formal educational tools that contribute to skill and competence development for young people aged 16-25 Ob.2 Reactivation of core values of EU (active citizenship, entrepreneurship) in 7 local communities for 24 months Ob.3 Accelerating digital transformation in youth work in Europe Ob.4 Boosting creativity for young people aged 16-25 years in Europe We envisage that our project will involve a number of 1000 young people directly (aged 16to 25 years old) from which at least 140 are young people with fewer opportunities (i.e., disabilities, social issues) and 300 practitioners (i.e., trainers, youth workers); they will be involved directly in testing, providing feedback and improving the method developed (the 2 groups are our direct target). The main activities during the project will be to develop 2 IOs - IO1 relates to developing a method/guide/toolkit of multimodal escape rooms and IO2 is developing MER App to easily customize and design an escape room. The methodology of "Youth Escape COVID" is experiential by nature as is based on the previous expertise and know-how of 7 skilled organisations in NFE design filed, and is based on the waterfall model Requirements->Design->Implement->Test-->Implement->Maintenance. The results of our project are huge both in nature and impact by developing a new NFE method to be used by practitioners in the field to address young people needs anywhere/anytime using an edutaiment (MER method/tool). Potential long term benefits include but does not limit: transferability of MER method/tool to other sectors (i.e., school, adult), scalability of the NFE method as it can be used to address in theory any issue that young people can have and lastly but not least is undying (it can stand the test of time by constand adaptation and transformation).
The vision of the project "Youth Escape COVID" was to create a highly innovative non-formal educational method and tool using culture as a foundation in this endeavour. The project's main scope was to combat the adverse effects of COVID-19 pandemic on youth in Europe creatively and innovatively. With regard to the project objectives, there were four that the consortium aimed to achieve, and they are listed below: Ob.1 Providing innovative non-formal educational tools that contribute to skill and competence development for young people aged 16-25. We achieved this objective because we developed more than seven escape rooms as part of the project that can be used as non-formal educational tools to educate young people about topics of their interest. Moreover, the methodology we developed serves as a tool to educate the broader community about creating escape rooms. Ob.2 Reactivation of core values of EU (active citizenship, entrepreneurship) in 7 local communities for 24 months. Through our APP, LTTA, Methodology Guide and Escape Rooms, we militated and promoted the core values of the EU. Ob.3 Accelerating digital transformation in youth work in Europe. We promoted digital transformation and advancement by creating the MER App that the broad public can access via web and mobile to learn about escape rooms, play the ones available and create their escape rooms. Ob.4 Boosting creativity for young people aged 16-25 in Europe. Young people’s creativity was encouraged when testing the escape rooms, finding solutions to puzzles, and stimulating young people’s and youth workers’ skills to create escape rooms during and after the LTTA. We consider that we have achieved what we aimed for at the beginning of the project, registering excellent and solid results that benefit our target group and the wider community.
We applied for this project because in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic outburst and related lockdown measures were implemented, significant interruptions occurred in young people’s lives. Young people’s transition phases to adulthood and autonomy were seriously affected (e.g., transition to education, to employment, towards economic and financial independence, or to establish their own family, to get the right to vote). Moreover, the pandemic stopped, changed or even derailed their evolution into becoming active citizens in the local and EU community. When we applied for this project, the “short” transition from COVID-19 to a “new normal” impacted all youth field actors, including policy-makers, practitioners, youth organisations and platforms for youth participation and youth researchers. Consequently, young people and youth workers in the field needed support and guidance. As a result, we aimed to analyse and understand young people’s needs in this context and devise a solution. Thus through the project proposal, we aimed to contribute to the development of youth work tools that can address a multitude of issues (i.e., employment, active participation, fostering creativity, sustainable development, social inclusion through the arts, enhancing digital skills, fostering entrepreneurship, boost creative domains). Moreover, we directed our attention to young people with fewer opportunities, such as young people in the category of NEETs, young people with disabilities, and young people from remote rural areas.