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SDGames

2023-3-ES02-KA153-YOU-0001717912023Mobility of youth workersongoing
Countries: ES|IT|HU|BG|PT|PL · Grant: €22,246
Green skillsCommunity developmentQuality and innovation of youth work

Objectives

Games are the main topic we have been focusing on for two years, thanks to the Youth for Youth project Strategic Partnership, 2020-2-HU01-KA205-079126. During the project we were able to research, understand, explore and test the Game Development Process (GDP) on different educational contexts to discover their power and impact among youth for connecting and deeply engaging them into active citizenship and problem solving. We recognized serious games as a powerful tool to enhance intrinsic motivation and passion towards social change. With this training we want to keep on playing and promoting the use of games to awaken a participatory spirit to enhance green skills in formal and non formal education. According to our experiences , we have gained an overview of the potential needs of our target, youth workers: which were innovative methodologies to tackle the challenge of low participation and engagement among youth,  strongly connected to the need of having easy to implement specific educational tools that involves simulation of real-world events or processes designed for the purpose of solving a problem in a joyful, but simplified way. The methods also directly relate to the need of youth: more engaging and interactive methods that enables students to put theory into practice, in addition allows to further develop soft skills for resilience in the process, and to discover a sense of belonging in relation with the local community and the need of making a meaningful contribution to society. Reflecting on also some of the shortcomings the idea of the SDGames training was born in order: - to develop more specific tools for working with the high level UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in local context, - to make the tools more effective with introducing the green competency framework.  “High-quality and inclusive education and training can help improve social and environmental conditions. Sustainable lifestyles require a shift in mindset and behaviour(..) Learning for environmental sustainability should empower individuals to THINK HOLISTICALLY AND QUESTION the world-views underpinning our current economic system. At the same time, it should encourage them to TAKE ACTION individually and with others to transform our society and shape sustainable futures for everyone. Lifelong learning should incorporate sustainability competences across disciplines to train the systemic thinkers and ETHICAL AGENTS FOR CHANGE who are needed to promote a sustainable society.“( Green Comp, p78). SDGames is a 6-day-long training course design for practioniers working with youth either as youth workers, educators, volunteers or youth leaders active on the field in line with the quote above, inviting them to take part in in value driven, youth centric activities for sustainable actions that allows them to question their own views and practices in order to be able to act as potential agents with hands on experiences and a better understanding of sustainable concepts in youth work. Our partnership beleives that effective, what is more incluse tools -in our case GDPs- with supporting competencies together can leads to quality improvements in youth work, in addition fosters various horizontal principles of the programme such as active citizenship, environment and climate change, inclusivness or even the solidarity aspect highlighted under the ESC. The GreenComp introduced to enhance quality is built around sustainabilty and neccessary competencies for working towards them. It will be a guiding framework towards action orientidness and increasing quality in various senses. The most important is that the participants will not only see, but experience and live its compentencies as the programme is structured to demonstrate them. The Comp raises awareness about the importance of learning for environmental sustainability that includes designing learning opportunities aimed at sustainability. However the framework itself calls for effective pedagogical practices that can help to incorporate the learning outcomes of the framewok and suggest active, student-centred, design- and project-based learning, gamification and analysis of real-world case studies,collaborative approaches that were also at the very heart of the formerly referred YfY cooperation. Therefore, we see crucial to walk the talk and set example with practical tools how to contribute to a learning culture that works towards sustanibility in our case utilsing the power that lies within games. In line with the above the mainobjectives of the SDGames training are the following: -Introduce the GreenComp as a theoretical framework to increase quality in youth work working towards sustanibilty. -Explore the possible applications of games as empowering tool that can facilitate inclusive change in the field of civic and green education. -Promote action oriented youth work and solidarity projects as tangible options to better understand, realise SDGs and live solidarity

Project partners (6)