Youth Values Erasmus Project

Project Title

Youth Values

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Research and innovation; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Our project aims to innovative research and to uncover the structures and patterns as well as lists and scales of values by young people in Slovakia and the Czech Republic with a focus on differences and specificities of young people in youth organizations. This innovative approach help to identify the values grounds of nowadays youth, individual young people and group values identities and patterns among selected youth work activities. These findings set the ground for deepening and enriching the evidence-based discussions about young people in general and youth work and its impact and quality as well. Based on these research findings we strive for broader social and expert recognition and validation of youth work in the fields of values, values transfer on young people and empowering the role of values in youth work and the society in general. Based on this “values screening” among young people and selected youth organizations from the Czech Republic and Slovakia further promotion of values in education and society can take place. Values in general in pedagogy, education as well as psychology have a role as “a compass” for individuals and their behavior and actions, that is why they deserve our focus and attention in our nowadays interdependent, global and democratic societies especially.

Youth work is value based since its nature, and concerning youth organizations, it is one of the most significant added benefits of such institutionalization of youth work. But in the Slovak and Czech context, the recent and past discussions were more focused on skills and skills development rather than the whole educational integration with our project we try to turn the wheel in the discourse and to remain the importance of the values in youth work, education, and society.

Our project thus researches the values of nowadays youth generation and the values profiles of young members of 15 carefully selected youth organizations representing the broad spectrum of youth work from big to small organizations, from the traditional youth organizations, Christian to secular or those focused on international dimensions of life and youth mobility.

For the research, we choose an innovative approach reflecting not only traditional steps which need to be done in proper social research as theory and other research reviews and integration, but we also include the experience and expertize of youth work and youth organizations and their values´ tools and documents.
After creating thus an innovative research questionnaire, representative samples of youth generation in both participating countries will be interviewed as well as asked within 15 participating youth organizations from both countries as well. This provides a solid, representative and reliable data basis for robust data analysis using various scientific and analytical methods.

As results several evidence reports will be created for further use, on the general youth populations, comparing them in both countries, showing the profiles of young people in the youth organizations and showing how the young people in various youth organizations differentiate each other and to general youth and what they have in common in the context of personal, social and cultural values.

Based on this innovation and strengthening the evidence-based approach in the Youth sector, the youth councils and youth organization can better fit and reconsider based on new facts their activities and methods in youth work, young people´s recruitment into youth work activities, but also in advocacy and lobbying activities in politics and youth policy.

To spread our research findings and the benefits and specifics of the youth work toward the whole youth work and youth policy environment in our countries, as well as to broader public and media, we also focus on developing innovative public engagement Infotainment tools and actions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. We will use cutting edge tech and art tools to enhance the factors of information delivery, fun, sensual triggering and emotional learning by the consumers and participants. This would be our contribution to experimenting with the new digital youth work and post-modern P.R. actions enhancing the interactive dialogue of the online world and offline individual learning.

Our approach, outcomes, data, and tools will be available for others to enable the transferability of our work and the long-lasting impact of our project. Setting this basis for the methodology, we can start to create a time series as well or welcome other countries using our tools and broaden the comparative perspective of our research.

Project Website

http://hodnotymladych.org

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 164594 Eur

Project Coordinator

RADA MLADEZE SLOVENSKA & Country: SK

Project Partners

• Junák – český skaut, z.s.
• AFS Mezikulturni programy, o.p.s.
• YMCA v Ceske republice
• CESKA RADA DETI A MLADEZE
• Asociace turistickych oddilu mladeze Ceske republiky