DiGi YOUTH Erasmus Project

Project Title

DiGi YOUTH

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: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Inclusion – equity; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

New technologies emerge rapidly. Digital literacy and 21st century skills play a crucial role as part of modern-day citizenship and modern life in general. All young people will need technological skills and an agile mind-set towards technology in their future work and everyday life, and youth work should be able to encourage this.

Undoubtedly, quality youth work that meets young people’s needs must include digital considerations. This does not mean that every youth worker should be a technical expert, but that recognition that young people are growing up in a digital era and need support to navigate the online aspects of their lives and critically analyse online information/interaction is becoming increasingly central to youth work.

The best approach for that is transformation of traditional youth work methods and tailoring them to be delivered in digital environment. To address the existing need for digitalisation and to increase the quality of youth work, DiGi YOUTH partnership created the concept of an ambitious 22-month project set to improve the skills of youth workers and youth organisations’ staff who lack the digital competences or attitudes to fully benefit from the opportunities created by digital technologies for delivering high quality youth work and engaging with disadvantaged youth.

Alongside the opportunities that digital youth work offers, there is also a lack of confidence, competence, strategic planning, and investment to enable the youth work sector to fully embrace these developments. DiGi YOUTH aims to increase those capacities by offering training and best practice sharing to youth practitioners and youth organisations’ staff to help them incorporate digital youth work. It also creates opportunities to showcase the value of digital youth work.

DiGi YOUTH aims to promote quality youth work through supporting open and innovative practices in a digital era. The project objectives are as follows:
– Share good digital youth work practices across Europe and provide networking platform leading to improved practice and innovation within the European youth work community via the DiGi YOUTH Work hub;
– Build capacity of youth workers to respond to digitalisation through training that meets their needs, based on gamification, specifically via the DiGi YOUTH Simulation game;
– Improve digital youth work planning and the development of relevant strategies and methods or tools through increasing awareness of requirements for and best practices in application of digital youth work among youth workers and youth organisations’ staff, summarised and shared as DiGi YOUTH Work manual;
– Improve digital/social media and information literacy of youth workers and especially youth organisations to engage with and support young people, and enhance their capacities to use (multi)media as youth work tool via DiGi YOUTH Media manual;
– Raise awareness of digital youth work within the youth work sector and among policy makers and funders nationally and EU wide.

DiGi YOUTH will provide youth workers and youth organisations’ staff with the unique opportunity to obtain knowledge and practical experience related to digital youth work in a dynamic format. Moreover, they will be able to reach out to disadvantaged and non-organised youth and thus become more inclusive. The creation of the simulation game, which will be an innovative mix between real-life practices and a gamified experience, aims to immerse the youth workers in realistic situations and point them to the correct solutions. It is a precedent for this kind of training and will increase willingness of users to learn and predispose them to accepting new outlooks on life, open them up to intercultural communication more, and nurture in them a kinder outlook on engagement of young people from different communities. Hence DiGi YOUTH will provide a more interactive environment, based on situations of case studies related to initiatives with a more integrated approach to youth work and network activities.
The target groups of the project are:
– Youth workers – as they are expected to lead, inspire, and deliver digital youth work, most activities are aimed at training them via innovative approaches based on open education and innovative practices – the DiGi YOUTH Work hub, simulation game, and DiGi YOUTH Media manual.
– Youth organisations staff – the project will increase the awareness of ethical and organisational considerations and requirements of digital youth work among this target group, their inclusiveness, as well as provide best practices for practical application of digital youth work and media tools, summarised and shared in two DiGi YOUTH manuals.
– Young people – the project will promote digital youth work among young people who can benefit from its advantages via the planned multiplier events to showcase innovative practice in digital youth work and launch the elaborated project outputs – DiGi YOUTH Work hub, simulation game, and manuals.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 133252 Eur

Project Coordinator

Europsky Dialog & Country: SK

Project Partners

• SDRUZHENIE BADESHTETO SEGA
• HIGHER INCUBATOR GIVING GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY
• YASAR UNIVERSITESI