Hi-tech Youth Work

This project is an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership for Youth.

The project is coordinated by ASSOCIAZIONE UNIAMOCI ONLUS (Palermo, Italy) and involves other 3 partner organizations: CREATORII (Moldova), ASOCIACIJA “AKTYVUS JAUNIMAS” (Lituania) and VisMedNet Association (Malta).

Young people 's lifestyle is so entrenched in technology, that is not an option as to whether the youth service should use social and digital media because of the impending risk is to become outdated to young people. The Flash Eurobarometer 408 "European Youth" shows that the percentage of young people in EU who, in the 12 months before the survey, participated in any activity of a youth club, leisure time club or any kind of youth organisation, is just 16%, registering a decreasing respect the previous survey in 2013, when the value was the 22%.

Hi-tech Youth Work wants to create a field of sharing of competences and tools, validated by youth organisations based in 4 different countries (Italy, Malta, Moldova and Lithuania), in order to increase the abilities of the involved youth workers to act also as media educators, able to use social media and digital competences not only for the purpose of communication but also as part of the key content of youth work, even able to make inclusive the youth work. It answers to the need of constant updating of the youth workers to the new technologies, allowing a transnational exchange of competences and suggestions that can represent a point of reference for other youth workers and organizations.

The cooperation among youth workers from different countries will allow to deepen the use of different ICT tools and methods that during the project will be generalized and applied in the partner organisations, laying the foundations for an European shared inclusive and high quality youth work.

The project will have a duration of 2 years (March 2017 - February 2019) with the main project activities being 4 short-term joint staff training events and a blended mobility for young people in Palermo with the aim use the full potential of ICT in youth work while creating a non formal learning pattern for the improvement of the young participants employability skills. The process of exchange of best practices among the partners will cover the following topics:
- use of social and digital media for communication purposes and management issues related to the youth work
- ICT based educational games, youth activities based on the creation of digital contents: digital photography, meme creation, creation of photo-galleries, video, documentary movies, digital art, creation of digital booklets etc.
- suggestions and methods about the management of youth work activities with mixed ability groups using the vehicle of the creation of digital contents.
- media education

The process of application and validation of the shared ICT based methods and tools in youth work will allow to create useful and concrete tool-kit and tutorials that can be easily disseminated and used by other youth workers from all over Europe and beyond; the project will produce: a final digital booklet containing validated tools and strategies to strengthen the use of new technologies in youth work; the periodical creation and publication of tools in the form of video-tutorial or descriptions; the organisation of 4 final webinar where the youth workers will train other youth workers on the project results.

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