Digital Youth: Preparing Youth Workers for a Digital World

Preparing youth workers to engage in digital youth work by providing them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies.

Project Number: 2021-1-CY02-KA2020-YOU-000029051

Funded by: Erasmus+ Duration: 01/01/2022 – 01/01/2024

Challenge

Digital literacy skills play a crucial role as part of modern-day citizenship, and youth work should be able to encourage this involvement, according to the European Union’s Work Plan for Youth for 2016-2018 report.

Young Europeans spend an increasing amount of their time, consuming digital media and use daily devices such as mobile phones, tablets, notebooks, laptops and computers (Eurostat’s statistics 2016). On the other hand, many youth workers do not yet wholly understand what digital media includes besides social media and as a result a lot of youth work practitioners lack the digital skills to fully benefit from and utilize the opportunities created by digital technologies. Consequently, youth workers lack the competencies needed to design and deliver digitally-oriented interactive and engaging actions and services that will best meet the needs of youth.

Therefore, there is a prevalent need to improve the competencies of youth workers and to further elevate the appreciation and role of youth work in participating countries. Moreover, youth workers themselves need to enhance their digital skills and introduce new activities and ways of learning that will be more effective in this constantly shifting environment.

Innovation

The Digital Youth project focuses on preparing youth workers to engage in digital youth work by providing them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies. The project aims to promote the importance of digital youth work in the partner countries and Europe; build the competencies of youth workers to use digital tools in youth work; develop quality resources for digital youth work; and improve the overall quality of youth work conducted in the participating countries.

Action

The Digital Youth Training Package involves the development of an attractive package to support and educate youth workers to advance their digital competencies and consequently further Digital Youth Work. Specifically, the Digital Youth training package will be comprised of: i) an interactive handbook for youth workers and ii) 3 online learning modules. The handbook will consist of information for youth workers to help them conceive the benefits and applications of digital tools in the field of youth work along with specific guidelines, tips and information on how to use them. Additionally, the training package will be comprised of three learning modules covering essential aspects of Digital Youth Work that will be accompanied by quizzes and feedback to participants.

This activity involves the development of a web 2.0, mobile responsive, e-learning platform that will serve as the website of the project, host and provide access to its results as well as make available 50 Open Educational Resources. The e-learning platform will serve as a one-stop-shop providing instant access to the full suite of digital learning resources developed in the project, such as online modules, guidebooks, and the OERs.

Utilizing a Youth Participatory Evaluation method, that will involve the active involvement in the processes of the project of the Digital Youth Committee, the participating organizations will compile a comprehensive report to document lessons learned as well as good examples and practices in the field, and policy and practice recommendations. Among others, the report will feature case studies and examples of good practices structured to serve as attractive informative resources for youth workers, youth organizations and stakeholders.