Context of the project

A number of issues keep concerning youth work organizations all over Europe, as well as society at large: facilitating the integration of people from different cultural backgrounds to a new community, supporting respectful living together and mutual acceptance in multicultural communities; ensuring young people are prepared for a dynamically changing and digitizing society; and enabling youth workers and educators to support youngsters in the numerous challenges they face in todays’ society. 

Addressing these four areas together is particularly powerful because they are interconnected. Improving young people’s life competences often requires enhancing digital readiness, which in turn can benefit from integrating diverse cultural perspectives. 

Likewise, fostering cultural diversity and integration can lead to more innovative solutions to young peoples’ resilience and digital challenges. Together, these elements create a holistic approach to building a resilient, inclusive, and future-ready society. 

The project seeks to address the urgent need of youth workers to increase their knowledge and competences for better support of social inclusion of young newcomers to the community, and encourage active citizenship of local youngsters to promote a welcoming culture and positive experiences of cultural diversity. The project is specifically aimed at building youth workers’ capacities to support young people in navigating an increasingly digitizing and diversifying society. 

Being active mainly in non-formal and informal learning environments and often engaging on a voluntary basis, youth workers usually have more diverse professional backgrounds than educators in the formal sector. As shown in the 2022 European report on digital competences in youth work, the non-formal education sector in Europe generally still lacks structured professional training in digital competences, and self-assessments of such competences are rarely done. Nevertheless, the work with specific target groups requires youth workers to constantly develop their competences, and to have the right tools and strategies to apply them in their work realities. 

The project therefore intends to provide content, activities and digital tools that allow youth workers to easily get an overview over relevant issues regarding common values in diverse societies, media literacy and digital competences; it will allow them to assess and strengthen their competences and to practically apply suitable approaches in their work. At the same time, participating organizations and associated partners will assess and improve their strategies to develop and apply competence frameworks in their teams. They will increase their capacities to provide structured training and resources to staff members and volunteers to safeguard quality and professionalism in their youth work. 

The project will further increase visibility and recognition of this important work in the partner communities and support quality development of the sector by promoting increased synergy and shared effort. 

Funded by the European Union. However, the views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or JUGEND für Europa. Neither the European Union nor JUGEND für Europa can be held responsible for them.