We are currently living in unprecedented times where aspects and activities of our daily lives are, justifiably, being restricted for public health reasons. Millions of young people across Europe and the rest of world have spent weeks quarantining and self-isolating. The pandemic has had a range of serious consequences for young people such as: Loss of employment, uncertainty surrounding their education and financial uncertainty. These consequences are worsened by the daily challenges which many young people may be facing as a result of quarantine or self-isolating. Many young people will be suffering from loneliness, isolation and disconnection from their peers and the world around them. Although many of us may be feeling isolated and disconnected we are, now more than ever, all connected by one common obstacle. 'While We Wait' aims to reconnect young people and provide them with an opportunity and a platform to express their thoughts and feelings of the current pandemic and how it is impacting them. In collaboration with our Portuguese, Spanish and Italian partners, we will create a virtual platform where we will facilitate our participants to share their thoughts on views on a range of different social, political and economic issues which have become significant as a result of the pandemic. Our participants will have the opportunity to express their own challenges and feelings which have been caused by the pandemic. We hope to use all the different modes of virtual expression available to achieve this. We intend to record Zoom conversations of our participants discussing certain topics and encourage our participants to create art pieces to express themselves. These conversations and other forms of expression will be shared virtually among social media and the other forms of dissemination which the partners have available to them in order to allow other young people see that others are facing similar challenges. In 2021, once it is safe to travel again, we plan to host two separate blended youth mobility meetings. The first, which will be hosted by our Spanish partners, will give our participants the opportunity to witness the catalog or 'history book' which is subsequent of them sharing their opinions, expressions and creativity throughout our current crisis. During this meeting, we will decide the dissemination of the project. The young people will, rightfully, be in charge of this process and decide where in history does their creations belong and where it goes in the future. Our second blended youth mobility, which will be hosted by our Portuguese partners, will evaluate the project, from its current beginnings right until the end. We have agreed that each organisation will have 5 participants each, which in total is 20 participants. We are excited to be working with our partners for a number reasons. Firstly, we have worked with most of them before and had positive and insightful experiences. Additionally, we believe we will have interesting and diverse participants and opinions due to the participating countries. Spain and Italy have been the 2 worst hit countries from the pandemic within Europe and their citizens have been experiencing quarantining and isolation longer than we have in Ireland. Also, on the other hand, it is widely viewed that Portugal have reacted well to the current pandemic. This diversity will be interesting but also helpful on how young people can learn from each other. In addition, we are excited to be co-operating with our Portuguese partner again as we both share a common target group - young people from 'disadvantaged' socioeconomic backgrounds. We expect that our initial results on our participants will be less feelings of disconnection and isolation due to reconnecting with their peers. We also expect our participants, through sharing common challenges and thoughts, will be able to learn from their peers and be placed to overcome the challenges that they are facing as a result of the pandemic. We also believe that this process of peer-to-peer learning will have significant increase of empathy among our participants. Apart from our participants, we believe this project is capable of having a positive impact on others. We will publish and share our creations and results of bringing our participants together and we believe that others who may also have similar challenges and feelings as our participants can benefit from these publications. Additionally, we expect that, being responsible for the dissemination, our participants will develop their organisation skills, planning, teamwork etc. To conclude, we believe the potential long term benefits of this project to be significant as it will show that our organisations and youth work can continue to operate and be effective during a global crisis. This project will show that youth work can happen virtually and perhaps encourage others to do the same if a crisis like this occurs again.
The overall aim was to give young people a platform to come together to voice their thoughts, feelings, and opinions on this historical moment in their lives. The project was developed from start to finish by young people for young people. The project's aim was to ensure that young people felt empowered to take back control of their lives. The project was implemented to offer a positive element on a European level to capture a unique story from the eyes of young people. The aim was to look at the positives, the challenges, the learning, and the similarities being faced on a day-to-day basis and how young people can become active citizens and be proactive in response to the most unprecedented moment in their young lives. The aim was to build resilience in a community of people that had faced huge challenges. The project wanted to build self-belief and developed young leaders to guide and implement an intercultural experience in a period where every young person was experiencing a global pandemic and losing connection with the world around them. Our objective was to create a platform where young people can reconnect with each other and share their own experiences of the virus pandemic and the challenges which they are facing. We believe, because of this, young people will have increased empathy for the struggles of others, be able to learn from each other's experiences, and be willing to help each other overcome common challenges. Another objective, which is a by-product of this process, is to increase connectivity among young people and try to minimize the feeling of isolation or loneliness which young people may be suffering with.
The project was applied for during the pandemic. Young people aged between 18 -25yrs were experiencing great loss and feeling very forgotten. During this period there were many young people reaching out for advice, support, and often just to sound their fears, confusion, and frustrations about feeling very much forgotten by the world. A particular number of young people had reached out to the Talk about youth project to look for support, particularly in terms of education, and employment but more importantly their mental health and progression in this transitional period in their lives where their world had stopped. Many of the young people were from social economic disadvantage backgrounds. A key concern for these young people was the injustice they experienced throughout the pandemic. They often had no place to work or study online due to their housing situations, they lost their part-time jobs and were left with no financial support. The young people wanted to capture a period in history from their lived life experiences. They wanted to look at the effect the pandemic had on them and their European friends. The project aimed to facilitate young people from different communities within Europe to express, their different perspectives, experiences, and challenges living through a monumental time in history. Young people wanted to tell their stories and captured the stories of others.