The project aimed at supporting educators and youth workers in their work with vulnerable young people by promoting the use of digital storytelling and peer education as approaches that could enhance their professional skills and the effectiveness of their work with young digital natives. With the development of original reference materials for trainers, educators and youth workers (guidelines, methodological documents and tools), it was expected that innovative learning strategies were co-designed and tested, thus becoming part of the educators’ toolkit. Online training for the young beneficiaries used learning-by-doing/experiential methodologies, supporting their activation and empowerment throughout the learning process. Furthermore, these phases were followed by debriefing to help conceptualise and formalise learning (according to David Kolb's model of the “learning cycle”).
In the project partners' countries it was detected that youth workers and educators shared a common need in terms of methodologies, approaches and tools to be used to cater comprehensively to the requirements of their vulnerable young beneficiaries, combining inclusive learning strategies with the smart use of digital tools. In this respect, the PRESTO proposal was conceived with the primary objective of combining two well-known methodologies, involving the fusion of peer education with the art of digital storytelling. While it remains incontrovertible that both of these approaches have individually found application and undergone pilot endeavours across a spectrum of initiatives within the European Union and beyond its borders, the harmonisation of these two methodologies presented a truly novel and unprecedented advancement. From the point of view of the participating organisations, the project addressed the growing need for skills with respect to the development of new and innovative educational solutions to be applied in different learning settings, such as those which were experienced due to the restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.