Through the implementation of the project activities, we wanted to improve both organisations’ practices of supporting young people in implementing youth-led community engagement actions, as a tool that contributes both to participatory learning of young people and to community development. We wanted to make the learning process more participatory in relation to young people included, and to put focus on supporting young people to plan and organise their learning objectives and processes, based on which they would decide how to design and implement their community-based projects. We also wanted to provide the youth workers with necessary competences and skills to support the process of self-assessment and planning of the learning objectives of young people, and then facilitate the process of developing their community-based projects. The project practice was systemized in a set of guidelines which can be followed in other activities aimed at empowering young people to actively participate, as well as in the training of youth workers. By implementation of project activities and creation of diverse and new content within local communities, the visibility of organisations and youth work at local level was enhanced.
We applied for this project to advance both organisations’ practices of supporting young people in implementing youth-led community engagement actions, as a tool that contributes both to participatory learning of young people and to community development. At the same time, youth workers had the need to develop their competencies in supporting young people's experiential learning processes through the design and implementation of youth-led community engagement actions enabling their self-directed learning from those actions. Both organisations had the need to systemize their existing knowledge related to young people’s participatory learning, community engagement and active participation through the creation of an innovative and more structured approach to informal learning. In this way, sustainable mechanisms of active participation and involvement of young people in organisations’ activities and community were developed and the visibility of organisations in the field of youth work was enhanced. Both organisations needed to strengthen external networks and partnership in serving communities and broadening society by promoting innovative youth-led practices thus stressing the importance of different youth work approaches.