Living in the “digital era” offers a wider range of opportunities for youth activism and engagement but does not always gives the desired impact and the change we want to see. Starting from this assumption, the project ON|OFF LINE: Youth Engagement Using Digital Tools strives to detect which tools of active youth engagement are better to be used, whether using online or offline tools, or maybe a combination of both, eventually results in achieving the desired effect, the goals that are placed and thus changes occur. The project also transfers the capacities of all three partners’ organizations around this common idea to detect the potential of using digital tools for youth activism and engagement. The project addresses the development of innovative methods for enhancing digital skills of young people and promotes their active citizenship at the same time. Digital skills are developed in parallel with skills for civic engagement in dealing with current social issues. Youth engagement recognizes young people’s right to participate in decisions that impact them and acknowledges the great skills and strengths they can bring to the table. It injects young people as valued stakeholders into creating effective and inclusive policies, programs and environments. Youth engagement can and does change lives. However, effective youth engagement leads to positive outcomes for young people at several levels: (1) Individual level-increased personal skills, healthy choices, and sense of identity, (2) social level-stronger positive connections with friends and adults, and a larger support network, (3) system level-greater civic engagement, policies and programs responsive to the needs of young people, and new creative ways to govern. When young people are engaged in decision-making, they feel connected to their environment and community; they build relationships with their peers and adults and learn new skills. They are more likely to make the right decisions, have socially adequate behaviour and make fewer wrong risks. Engaged youth are also more likely to do well in education and continue learning throughout their lifetime. But what makes youth engagement effective and how it can be achieved? The issue of finding the right approaches and methods to engage youth effectively, continuously troubles youth CSOs as they struggle in channeling their efforts to convert youth participation into youth engagement, achieve impact and improve the situation of youth through the world. Participation is the simple act of showing up, but engagement occurs when head, heart, feet and spirit are involved. Engagement is a process that is dynamic, reciprocal and interactive.The project aims to discover which methods provide biggest impact on youth and what kind of tools prove to be most efficient in order to inspire young people on action. This enables support to overcome the abovementioned challenges and further supports youth organizations and youth workers.
On/Offline is a collaborative project involving over 100 participants from Austria, Brazil and North Macedonia. It was undertaken by members across 3 youth-led organizations (Popedu - Austria, Engajamundo - Brazil and The Center for Intercultural Dialogue – North Macedonia) between 2018 and 2022 as a Key Action 2 project under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme.With the goal of inspiring and engaging young people into becoming socially active and standing up for their beliefs, thereby creating real-world societal change, the aim of On|Offline was twofold. Firstly, to discover which ‘online’ and which ‘offline’ tools are available and secondly, how to use these tools effectively and to what extent; whether a social campaign is best performed online, offline, or a combination of both.The project started in 2019 with a kick-off meeting in São Paulo in April, a youth exchange in Ohrid in August, and a workshop in Vienna in October. During these meetings the participants had the chance to explore the different concepts of offline civic engagement, online ‘click’ activism and to discuss campaign ideas and how best to implement them, looking into engaging young people in the online and offline environments.Between 2020 and 2022 was the ‘practical’ phase in which the participants implemented their plans and ideas in their chosen online, offline, and mixed on|offline campaigns in their respective countries. Due to SARS-CoV-2 this implementation was a bit challenging, especially with the social and public restrictions in each country. Offline events decreased, but the focus and attention for online solutions was emphasized. This was beneficial to the project, because it boosted new ways of connecting and communicating online inside the three organizations, as well with the local communities. The participants also collaboratively created a booklet which is available for online download. It includes statistics on countries’ general demographics and online engagement, social analysis on topics such as culture and political engagement, campaign examples, a list of the online tools that can be used, detailed advice and templates that can be used when creating a social campaignIn March 2022 the project was presented in front of 39+ representatives from Austrian cities, municipalities and regions to work on social media and content creation as important stakeholders and multipliers. It was also presented at The Global Shapers Vienna Hub, a network of young people driving dialogue, action and change as an initiative of the World Economic Forum.The evaluation meeting took place in April 2022 in São Paulo, with two representatives of each organization being present. The focus of this offline meeting was to evaluate the ongoing social media campaigns, evaluate the distribution of the booklet and analysing the impact of the project overall on local and online communities.