Project duration: 1.12.2019. – 30.11.2020.
Project reference: 2019-2-IT03-KA205-016467
Grant amount: 59.955,00 €
Donor: Erasmus+ Italian NA
Summary:
Most of the today approach of youth workers in establishing a contact with youngsters many times is ineffective because the methodologies to attract the youngsters’ attention and interest are outdated. Youth workers struggle in finding contacts and moment of dialogue with youngsters because they use tools that are too far from the daily life of teenagers today, who spend most of the free time online. Gaming and social networks are some of the most common hobbies for youngsters and can be considered as a passive activity. Or, from other perspective, the youngster in that moment can be described as an active contributor to an activity or a common project in a game platform or as a moderator in a chat. The forms of establishing and maintaining communication have undergone fundamental changes. ICT-aided solutions are playing an ever-greater role, replacing interpersonal communication.
Many times, youngsters discover most part of opportunities for their free time online and that’s why they don’t get usually in touch with youth centre and youth workers. Even if youngsters show a big confidence in using online tools they are still not educated in using these tools with full awareness. This project responds to the needs of our youngsters (mainstream and marginalised) and youth workers, as well as is in line with the latest findings on European level that there is a need for innovative youth work approach towards youngsters that spend a lot of their time online and do not visit (local) youth centres and youth clubs so much, any more. With this project, we aim at further empowering our youth workers in innovative usage of digitalisation and gamification methodology in regular work with marginalised youngsters in our communities, in order to increase attractiveness of the youth work activities and make them up-to-date for better impact on inclusion and engagement of both mainstream and marginalised youngsters.
Project objectives:
• Empower youth workers with knowledge and skills to implement digital tools in their everyday activities, with special focus on inclusion.
• Empower youth workers and improve knowledge management of youth work organisations in theory and practice for building competences of youth workers in Gamification and adventure/escape room methodology in online and offline youth work for inclusion.
• Encourage more youth workers for organising creative and innovative digital tools and youth work activities with gamification methodology based on affordable, low-cost and efficient adventure/escape rooms among mainstream and marginalised youngsters in our communities.
• Attract more youngsters to our youth work activities by multiplying the innovative low-cost and efficient escape rooms against marginalisation in our communities, and thus increase inclusion among youngsters.
We expect following direct participants / beneficiaries of our project:
– 8 staff / project managers and assistants;
– 12 teachers/trainers/researchers and technicians working on the intellectual outputs;
– 20 multipliers youth workers that will test the outputs with at least 80 youngsters (with fewer opportunities) on local level
– 60 participants of the multiplier events’ conferences, with at least 100 youngsters participating at low-cost escape rooms at the multipliers’ events
Project activities:
A1 – Project Management
M1 – Kick-off meeting
O1 – E-learning course “Digitalisation of youth work for inclusion”
M2 – Second meeting
O2 – Toolkit “Gamification and Escape room methodology in online and offline youth work for inclusion”
M3 – Third meeting
E1, E2, E3, E4 – Open conferences in
SE, HR, IT, DE M4 – Evaluation meeting Project will directly impact organisational capacities.
We expect the positive and long-lasting effects on partner organisations who will increase their capacity and competences for providing quality youth work activities for inclusion based on innovative approach with using digitalisation, gamification and escape rooms methodology in their online and offline youth work with beneficiaries. With our intellectual outputs, we will influence the change and improvement of existing inclusion youth work / NFE methodologies and programmes, at first among partner organisations of the project, and later among partner of ours and their wider network of collaborators. Marginalised youth in communities will benefit from the enlarged support tools and mechanisms in their communities from youth workers. There will be more online, as well as offline opportunities of support and direct mentorship of youngsters by now digitalised youth workers. As a long-term impact, on local and national level, we expect increase of soft skills, critical thinking, active citizenship and inclusion competences of mainstream and fewer opportunities youth. Thus, more youngsters will contribute to building society of inclusive community of active citizens.