Digital youth work and digital inclusion are fast moving from an “emerging topic” reserved for the most innovative organisations to something that is required more than ever in order to support young people at all times, even when physical contact is not possible. Young people are facing with unemployment, underemployment, mental health challenges and even worse, many of them are for the second time in just a few years going through a major crisis, which will have profound economic, social and political consequences in the years to come. As such, youth organisations need to increase their capacity and develop innovative strategies to reposition themselves and respond to the emerging needs much faster than before. There is a huge potential, there is and is going to be an increasing need, but there are very little tools available and there is a very limited capacity at the moment in the youth sector, which is hit in many countries by severe under funding, migration of workers to other better-paid sectors and other challenges. We want to bring our contribution in changing that, put digital youth work back in focus and provide the tools needed to start implementing digital youth work with minimal effort. AIM: Increase the capacity of youth organizations from Romania, France, Bulgaria, Belgium and the federated networks of the partnership consortium to serve young people (including vulnerable youth) extensively and intensively through digital youth work and digital inclusion and safety practices. OBJECTIVES:1. Develop a collaborative learning space focused on digital inclusion and digital youth work between 5 EU-based youth organizations through the sharing of best practices and national approaches in a 25-month timeframe.2. Increase the capacity of at least 100 youth workers from minimum 4 EU countries to engage in digital inclusion and digital youth work activities in a 25-month timeframe.3. Increase the capacity of at least 25 youth organizations from minimum 4 EU countries to improve or adopt digital inclusion practices for reaching out to young people with fewer opportunities from their communities in a 25-month timeframe.4. Raise awareness among minimum 100 youth workers from 4 EU countries around the opportunities, challenges and solutions surrounding digital safety and privacy (including humane technologies and algorithms) in a 25-month timeframe.TARGET-GROUPS:- Youth workers from participating countries and other EU and partner countries interested in engaging in digital youth work activities and/or willing to learn more about this topic;- Youth workers who are working or willing to work with vulnerable young people and wish to engage them with digital tools or through digital youth work generally;- Youth organizations and their management teams from participating countries and other EU and partner countries who are planning to develop or create their digital youth work capacity/strategy;- Secondary target-group: Teachers who are interested in organising digital activities with their students and can get strong inspiration from digital youth work and digital inclusion practices;KEY RESULTS (selection): - 100 youth workers from at least 4 EU countries have a better understanding of digital youth work and digital inclusion and are more capable, motivated and competent of using it in their practice under conditions of safety and quality;- Minimum 250 young people from minimum 4 EU countries and minimum 250 youth workers have contributed to the “Shaping Digital Inclusion and Safety in the Post-Pandemic World” research;- Minimum 250 relevant learners have subscribed to the MOOC course on digital inclusion and safety and are better prepared to implement digital youth work activities in their own organisations;- 100+ youth workers are more aware and more capable of supporting their young people with elements related to deepfakes, fake news, (in)humane algorithms, digital privacy and safety;- 25+ youth organizations from minimum 4 EU countries are now better equipped to implement digital inclusion and digital youth work methodologies or strategies;- 30 youth workers from 4 EU countries benefit from a comprehensive digital youth work and digital inclusion training course hosted in Bulgaria, developing both their topic-related skills in an intercultural context, as well as having the opportunity to attend co-creation innovation labs to improve the Intellectual Outputs of the project; - 5 gamification tools are created and freely available for youth organizations to interactively enage and use them to develop their digital inclusion strategies;- 1 research paper/brief related to how young people and youth workers perceive digital youth work and digital inclusion in a post-pandemic context is published and freely available to youth organizations;

<< Background >>ActiveCollective is a project that focuses on developing a method of sustainable inclusion for unemployed adults through environmental activities. We see the need for such an initiative for multiple reasons.Creating an accessible learning frame for disadvantaged groups is a common challenge throughout Europe, especially when it comes to adults. There is a growing interest in working with youth and supporting it through various activities and opportunities, but offering the same to adults seems to be more difficult. One of the main reasons for this is that these adults are less likely to participate in such events, in most cases the participants are people who already take advantage of many learning opportunities. Also, this is the target group that has difficulties in adjusting to the formal educational system, thus losing connection with education in any form. This often results in social exclusion and borderline behavior (addiction, abuse, depression, etc.).Although there are many organizations that create various activities in order to support this target group, most of these events have no educational value or turn into a one-time experience with no impact in the long run. Inspired by our previous project, we came to the conclusion that broadening the spectrum of informal activities and finding a way to create a method of inclusion through these can be highly beneficial, finding a way to use nature as an educational tool can not only support the target group but also the wellbeing of our environment (through activities such as social gardening, biking, building nesting places).We strongly believe that environmental activities have a huge impact not only on nature and on our local communities, but also on the individuals involved. Many times such activities lack participation and interest since we don't seem to find a personal connection with these, taking care of our natural surroundings seems to bring no or little benefit for us. By using these activities as a tool for another purpose (supporting the inclusion of unemployed, low-skilled adults), we obtain more benefits while creating a sustainable system, a chain reaction - our environment immediately benefits from the activities, our local communities benefit from having a healthier environment and from having less and less unemployed people, unemployed people are included in a community and develop or discover skills that support them later on in the labor market, the organizations involved develop new working methods and create long-lasting results while learning and developing themselves.Through this project, we would like to offer a solution to the above-mentioned challenge by improving and extending the supply of high-quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of individual fewer opportunity adults so that they enhance their key competencies and have higher chances to enter the labor market. Our idea is to bring together partners who are actively working with this target group and to support them and their staff members in creating a suitable method of inclusion through activities focused on environmental change in order to create a long-term impact not only on the affected individuals but also on the organizations and on the local community. By creating an innovative playground and engaging persons with limited formal education not only in the activities of the organizations but also in their work, inclusion will happen on a much bigger scale and will serve as a way to tackle unemployment.By creating cross-sectoral cooperation opportunities and combining various tools and techniques (adding educational value to gardening and other environmental activities), we develop a unique approach and we contribute to our main vision: improving the quality of informal education, while creating diverse, alternative learning programs for vulnerable target groups.<< Objectives >>The project involves seven different countries: Netherlands, Romania, Austria, Greece, France, Latvia, and the Czech Republic.In order to reach the goals of this project, we are going to implement: three transnational meetings; four training activities designed for the staff members of our organizations (some of these staff members being low-skilled adults themselves); fourteen multiplier events; two intellectual outputs (one social garden in each participating country, and educational videos that record the process of creation while offering information on guidance and facilitation).The methodology we apply in ActiveCollective is process-based and it is in line with Andrew McCoshan’s EPALE Thematic Coordinator.According to the need analysis and our partners' profile, together with our partners, we created the following objectives:- extending and training the competencies of our partner organizations when working with fewer opportunity adults (designing activities, creating a sustainable relationship with the target group, offering different learning opportunities within the organization, encouraging the active participation of unemployed adults within society);- improving and extending the supply of high-quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of individual fewer opportunity adults so that they enhance their key competencies;- disseminating the project results, inside and outside of the participating countries with the support of the associated organizations;- ensuring the step-by-step evaluation through meetings, training events, Europasses, and questionnaires;- creating a sustainable partnership of complementary parties (with various scopes).The project idea has been created mainly by the involved organizations and by certain members of their target groups. As a result, each phase of this application has been adjusted to the needs of our partners and their participants, thus ensuring an actual impact in the long run. While including our participants from the very beginning, we keep supporting their personal growth and we keep expanding the capacity of our partner organizations as well. Through this project we combine inclusion and active participation, thus creating a dynamic and accountable approach towards unemployment. By using environmental activities as practical tools in order to implement this approach, we create results on multiple levels: unemployed young adults and adults will have the opportunity to grow, to realize their character strengths, and to develop certain skills while being in an inclusive educational environment; adult educators and active volunteers will improve their skills when it comes to facilitation, guidance, program design, and method development (especially while working with this target group); our partner organizations will expand their capacity while developing their own method of inclusion, creating environmental practices and involving more and more adults in this learning cycle; the associated partners and other stakeholders will have the opportunity to improve themselves professionally and to widen their reach locally and internationally; the local communities will benefit from healthy, inclusive practices and will eventually see the possibilities of co-existence and co-creation with this target group (instead of focusing on the negative aspects); the environmental activities created in this project frame will support the natural habitat and will contribute on a very practical level to the expansion of an environment-friendly mindset. Through this chain reaction, we aim to create a long-lasting impact on local, regional, national, and international levels. By focusing on the Impact tool through all our project activities, we keep our initial objectives in front and we ensure the quality of our project results. Also, we create a common language with our partners and this will support us during the upcoming activities as well (outside of this project frame).<< Implementation >>While creating the project structure, we paid attention to the following aspects: designing activities that complete each other, thus covering our topic from various directions and perspectives; including local practices in order to ensure the impact and to promote active participation and cooperation; adding project management meetings in order to create a flow in our communication and preparation; organizing multiplier events on local, national and international levels in order to disseminate the project results and to spread our method of inclusion and environmental practices all around Europe. All these activities have been aligned to the overall impact that we aim to create - by implementing them, we can adequately cover all relevant aspects of our project initiative. In order to create a smooth cooperation process with all our project partners, we decided to organize three transnational meetings. Each of these meetings will be organized in different countries, thus encouraging more involvement and stimulating a sense of ownership between all our partners. Since ActiveCollective is a long-term cooperation, we intend to add frequent online management meetings as well, still, these physical gatherings are necessary and will support us in creating a connection and an optimal project atmosphere.Furthermore, we intend to organize four training events in the Netherlands in order to develop our project results and to achieve the expected outcomes. We are going to develop these events gradually: during the first event we create a common language and explore the context of each partner organization while developing educational environment-friendly activities; during the second event we develop guiding techniques in order to add an educational value to these environmental activities and to support the learning process of our target group; during the third event we add another layer - we explore ways of creating longer programs, workshops, camps from these environmental activities while paying attention to basic facilitation elements; finally, during the fourth event we put all these pieces together, under the umbrella of our method of inclusion - we get back to the Impact tool and we explore the possibilities of creating long-lasting environmental programs that respond to the needs of our target group, thus creating an actual impact in the long run.During these training courses/meetings, we work with the staff members of our partner organizations (some of these people belong to the target group itself). Our partner organizations, target groups, associated partners, and local communities will directly benefit from the results.The outcomes regarding the participants are:- acquiring new skills in guiding the target group and broadening their informal toolkit;- developing their competencies in creating environmental activities;- understanding the interconnections between formal, non-formal education and the labor market.As an outcome the partner organizations will:- equip their staff with new pedagogical materials needed for the target group;- improve the partners’ educational output by adding in a new way to work with their target groups;- open up to new ideas coming from other European countries;- expand their international profile;- expand their visibility in the partner countries.The outcomes regarding the target group:- becoming more employable while being included in the local communities;- being included in high-quality educational activities;- being part of a European learning frame.Furthermore, in-between our training activities each partner organization implements the learnings while experimenting with various environmental work-forms in order to test these and to support the consortium in further shaping and improving the results; this approach creates engagement and ensures quality. Through the multiplier events, we spread our results and we support other organizations in having similar processes.<< Results >>The following tangible results are expected from this project:Two intellectual outputs:- a social garden created in each participating country (a practical, environmental tool that each partner organization develops during the project and uses after the project period as well, thus ensuring the sustainability of our results) - this garden will serve as an educational tool while working with adult learners;- educational videos that capture the whole process of developing these gardens, while offering tips and tricks as well in order to create similar tools in other countries or places (these videos are strongly connected to the first output, create visibility and support us in the dissemination phase - spreading the know-how and guiding other organizations through similar processes).By creating such gardens in each partner country, we ensure the sustainability of our results: unemployed young adults and adults facing fewer opportunities will have the opportunity to join these common spaces, thus staying active and contributing to the wellbeing of their surroundings. These gardens will be used by different target groups after the project period as well, thus expanding the capacity of our partner organizations and creating results in multiple areas simultaneously. With optimal guidance and facilitation, these gardens will turn into learning opportunities and will promote our method of inclusion. Since these gardens follow their own cycles (planting, growing, harvesting, resting), we intend to align our activities to these phases and to create our project structure accordingly. The innovative character of this output lies in our cross-sectoral cooperation: we use gardening as a response to unemployment, we use environmental activities as a way to foster inclusion. By creating new, tailor-made educational tools we also contribute to our desired impact: offering alternative learning opportunities for marginalized target groups and improving the quality of adult education. By filming this whole process and offering video tutorials for other professionals who would like to use similar tools, we create a chain reaction and promote environmental activities as learning opportunities all around Europe. Furthermore, we create promotion materials related to the project - photos, videos, posts in our social networks.The intangible results of the project are the following:- innovative approach and methodology created for this specific target group, which has the following estimated result: unemployed adults will be included in the work of the organizations and will have the opportunity to take an active role within the community, therefore will acquire skills and competencies in order to become more employable;- a more professional environment created for the support of this target group;- increased maintenance-quality of the local environment;- increased competencies in organizing and managing a long-term European project in the case of all our partners.