Starting of our project

On 01-03-2017 Hi-tech Youth work started: a strategic partnership for the exchange of good practices in the field of youth; the project has been funded by the Erupean Programme Erasmus+.

Hi-tech Youth Work wants to create a field of sharing of competences and tools, validated by youth organizations 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 wants to represent an answer 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 organizations, 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); the main project activities will be 4 short-term joint staff training events, each partner organization will manage one of them, for 3 youth workers and/or volunteers from each partner organization (each short-term joint staff training event will be followed by a phase of local activities for the application and experimentation of the learning outcomes in the partner organizations) and a blended mobility that will involve 5 young participants and an accompanying person per partner and will be held 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 implementation of the project will be based on a collaborative approach among the partners so each one of them will be responsible of specific actions in order to reach the foreseen results for each project activity. The learning process of the involved youth workers and volunteers will be mediated by the participatory learning and peer based learning in the form of exchange of good practices and actual experiences, learning by doing, practical experimentation of the learning outcomes. The results of the local activities will be constantly shared inside the partnership. 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 organization of 4 final webinar where the youth workers will train other youth workers on the project results. The project will have a strong personal and social impact on the participants in terms of knowledge and know how on the strategic use of ICT in youth work, it will improve the quality of the youth work activities and services offered by the participating organizations and it will strengthen their cooperation; the project results will represent a concrete support to the youth work of organizations and professionals and the youth, as target group, will gain in terms of effective learning outcomes, deeper engagement in YW, development of tolerance and solidarity and higher employability. The wide process of dissemination, the actual application of the project results in the partner organizations and the concrete planning of an extended project able to expand the operating range of the project will ensure the sustainability of the project impact.