Through the implementation of the project, young people, who are the main beneficiaries of the project, have been supported by youth workers in the conscious handling, processing, recognition and reading of information such as hejt, fake news, populist and radical content, and the ability to distinguish fact from opinion. This will protect them from the radicalisation and disinformation present in the mass media and especially on the internet. At the same time, the social awareness of young people and their civic attitude towards disinformation and radicalisation has increased. In addition, the skills of youth workers in critical thinking have been improved, which will significantly improve the quality of their work. Through the implementation of the project, space was created for the exchange of information between partners on new threats to young people as a result of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine. In addition, the partners implementing this project had the opportunity to discuss future cooperation in supporting young people affected by the pandemic and in other areas.
We applied for the project because, youth workers needed and still need support and new tools on how to deal with the uncritical opinions of young people, with their radical claims and attitudes, with their conspiracy theories (also regarding the existence of the COVID-19 virus) and with their unconscious repetition of populist and untrue information taken mainly from the Internet. The aim of our project was to equip youth workers with innovative tools - an e-learning course on critical thinking and youth workshop scenarios - to increase the quality of their youth work and to better support young people in handling populist content, hejt, fake news and hate speech.