The project set out to strengthen the capacity of youth workers and youth organisations to support young people, especially disadvantaged youth and young refugees from Ukraine, in developing the digital and human skills needed for personal development, social inclusion and employability. The main objective was to bridge the gap between the growing importance of these competences and the limited tools, training and guidance available to practitioners working in youth contexts. To achieve this, the project aimed to deliver four interrelated results: an evidence-informed handbook on developing young people’s digital and human skills; a pedagogically grounded immersive learning experience in the metaverse; an accessible offline game for contexts with limited technological access; and standards and recommendations for policymakers and youth organisations. Together, these objectives were designed to ensure both innovation and inclusion, combining advanced digital approaches with practical alternatives that could broaden participation and impact. The wider ambition was not only to produce resources, but to improve practice, influence policy, and create more inclusive pathways for youth learning and employability across Europe.
The project gives a response to the issue that many young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds and young Ukrainian refugees, need to develop their digital & human skills to support their personal development, social inclusion and employability, while youth workers often lacked the training, tools and evidence-informed guidance to support them effectively. The proposal also responded to wider post-COVID exclusion, unequal access to technology, and the risk that rapid digital transformation would leave vulnerable youth further behind. The needs addressed were therefore both educational and structural. First, there was a need to equip youth workers with practical, research-informed methods to foster digital literacy, communication, teamwork, empathy and other key competences. Second, there was a need to provide inclusive learning opportunities for youth through both immersive and offline formats, so that participation would not depend only on access to advanced technology. Third, there was a need to connect practice with policy by producing recommendations that could strengthen support for disadvantaged youth at organisational and system level.