The aim of the project was to integrate the concept of participatory science into the field of youth work and to raise active participation of young people in addressing societal challenges and to empower the youth sector for active involvement young people in public affairs. The project pursued the following objectives: 1. To introduce the concept of participatory science into the programmes of youth organisations. 2. To train trainers in the youth sector in participatory science. 3. to empower the youth sector and give it the tools to further develop and multiply the participatory science methodology within the youth sector. sector and beyond. 4. to enable young people to actively participate in addressing societal challenges.
The DIVE IN project took as its starting point the concept of participatory science, in which the partners saw an opportunity and a useful tool to encourage young people to get involved in monitoring the state of a phenomenon or challenge in the environment in a simple way for the benefit of society. Through active participation in science we wanted to empower youth workers to take a key role in their own development as well as in the development of their communities. With the concept of participatory science, we offered the sector a new field that qualitatively complemented and built upon the sector's existing work on strengthening democratic participation and autonomy (Youth Goal 9 in the EU Strategy 2019-2027). The project provided youth workers, youth trainers and the youth sector with a tool that will help them in future programming and enable the qualitative introduction of participatory science in their organisations. We found that the project particularly built on the desire for more knowledge in the field of science and opened up opportunities for designing new programmes in the future.