Innovative youth information service design and outreach Erasmus Project

Project Title

Innovative youth information service design and outreach

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Youth information and counselling services provide high-quality guidance to young people and help them make decisions to lead their lives constructively. These services have also a remarkable preventive function that constitutes a great added value to society. Despite the importance of youth information (YI) in supporting young people to achieve their full potential and to access their rights, it is still difficult for many youth information and counselling providers to effectively promote and reach the vast majority of young people that do not take advantage of these services. The purpose of service design thinking is to conceive or re-think services according to the needs of the user, so that it is user-friendly, needs-based, competitive and relevant to the target group.
The consortium re-thought youth information provision through the application of this innovative methodology, which will ensure a youth-centred and empowering approach. The tools and resources created in the project are based on evidence, consultations with young people and stakeholders, and research. The toolkit on service design in youth information provision includes both theory and practice, tools, quality measures, and is based on a methodology widely tested in other fields. The project involved YI providers, young people, and experts in training, innovative communication and service design.

Using desk research and focus groups to ensure the project results are evidence-based and reflect the needs and trends of young people, the expected results were:
– To produce an online course on service design in youth information delivery (using webinars, contributions from external experts, videos and other digital tools, particularly those used by young people) to be incorporated into the ERYICA training system;
– To create a toolkit on service design in youth information provision aiming to conceive more youth-friendly and effective YI services; and
– To test and pilot the resources developed at different stages and in order for the partners to produce their own YI strategy (7 strategies) based on service design methodologies. These will be used as good practice examples for other youth information services across Europe.

The ultimate objective of the project was to enable young people to become well-informed citizens and autonomous decision-makers through quality information and guidance. Access to information is unprecedented and brings with it a previously unseen tendency to also want to create media content, often in a biased and uncontrolled manner. Despite the abundance of information sources available to young people, it is not always easy for them to process and understand the information accessed. Youth information services provide assistance to young people, helping them to make to understand the information they access and to take informed decisions adapted to their personal needs. Educating young people on media and information literacy have also become key task of youth information and counselling services. Youth information services are fully equipped to advise young people on how to research, evaluate and appreciate information and how reliable it is.

YI services are available to every single young person, free of charge, and have a real impact on shaping their future. However, not all young people are aware that these services are available to them. The aim of this project was to create strategies, tools and resources to allow youth information providers to reach out to a maximum number of young people, especially those at risk of social exclusion, and to let them know that these services exist and are centred on their needs. In order to do this, professionals need to be trained on new channels and tools, and services need to be user-centred, appealing, relevant and visible. The target group is youth information providers who wish to discover new outreach tools and to re-think service delivery.

This project explored new avenues for youth work, through its use of evidence-based research and innovative service design methodologies. The focus was also on the active participation of young people throughout every stage of the project, using a user-centred service design approach to actively listen to and involve them in the service conception. It aimed to ensure that all young people, regardless of their situation, benefit from youth information and counselling services, and are therefore aware of the multitude of opportunities that are available to them. The resulting tools and strategies were created, piloted and evaluated by young people, youth workers and service design experts. The results of the desk research, the toolkit and the online course are ready to be used and exploited by youth information providers across Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 125778,07 Eur

Project Coordinator

AGENCE EUROPEENNE POUR L’INFORMATION ET LE CONSEIL DES JEUNES ASBL & Country: LU

Project Partners

• AGENZIJA ZGHAZAGH
• Institut Valencià de la Joventut (IVAJ)
• AGENCE NATIONALE POUR L’INFORMATION DES JEUNES
• NATIONAL YOUTH FEDERATION COMPANY LIMITED BY GUARANTEE
• ProMo Cymru Ltd
• Koordinaatti – Nuorten tieto- ja neuvontatyön kehittämiskeskus, Oulun kaupunki
• COMUNIDAD DE MADRID