"In complex societies and in an integrated Europe that offers many challenges and opportunities, access to information and the ability to analyze and use information is increasingly important for young Europeans. Youth information is dynamic in terms of establishment of new information centers, mobility of youth information workers, and new trends in the field of information following the needs of young people. In conditions of easy access to Internet and other electronic media and tools of communication, young people still remain insufficiently informed on the available opportunities that fit them. The strategic partnership derives from the previous experiences of the partners. On the one hand, the Coalition of youth organizations SEGA from Macedonia runs two Youth Information Centers with less experience and existence of only several years, and on the other hand, the project involves experienced regional youth information center from Croatia. Moreover, the project includes ERYICA as European network with expertise in the field of youth information.Each partner works in the field of youth information and it is challenged to deliver information to the young people in their community on daily basis. Thus, the need to identify young people’s needs in order to improve the quality of youth information is essential. In addition, partners identified the need of close cooperation and connection between the youth information centers in Europe as for exchanging information, experiences and good practices, as to practical implementation of ITC in the youth information work.The project aims at enhancing the quality of Youth Information by developing Guide for youth information workers based on exchange of practices to be applicable by the Youth Information Centers in Europe. In particular the project objectives will reflect to: exchange experiences of innovative tools and techniques for youth information; developing European dimension among countries, in particular on the field of youth; exchanging working methods among organizations; acquisition of new professional skills and competences for youth information workers; promoting transnational learning experiences and proposing best practices in the long term; building a dynamic network among countries and a sustainable partnership.The project envisages two specific aspects: 1. Preparation of Guide of best practices in the filed of youth information work "" Information fit to youth"", according to structured and detailed need assessment of youth information workers.2. Short-term joint staff event for youth information workers in Macedonia in order to build the capacities of youth information workers.The main results of the project reflect at:• Conducted detailed need assessment in the youth information work.• Prepared Guide of best practices in the field of youth information work.• Exchanged experiences and good practices on functioning of youth information centers.• Disseminated Guide of best practices in the field of youth information work to youth information workers, youth information center, youth organizations and institutions for youth in Europe.• Empowered youth information workers from Macedonia in on-line youth information, different channels of information, fitting information to the needs of young people, research, reliable and on-time informing, as well as for establishment of youth information centers and points, networking, and providing support and peer guidance to newly established youth information centers.• Conceived solid base for continuation of the strategic partnership through inviting other relevant stakeholders to join the partnership.Since the project includes partner organizations of three programme countries Macedonia, Luxembourg and Croatia, the first impact will be in these countries, and in particular at a regional level, where the partners are more present and develop their work. At local level the project will provide better overview of the youth needs, and will influence on the strengthening of the capacities of youth information workers. We expect that the project will lead to practical implementation of the Guide for youth information workers at regional level, and therefore other youth information centers.At national level the project will have impact on the collaboration and communication between young people, youth workers and informative representatives of national institutions working in the field information. It is expected new youth information centers in Macedonia to be established.Making the deliverables of the project available to the Youth Information Centers and SHEryica users, and ERYICA member organizations, and other relevant stakeholders in Europe will contribute towards improving the overall situation with youth information in Europe.The project will be implemented in period of 6 months in Macedonia, Croatia and Luxembourg."

Media and Information Literacy (MIL) are essential skills in the digital age. Young people, and all other generations, have to evaluate the authenticity of every piece of information they access, across multiple channels and through all different kinds of sources. The need for such skills has become even more apparent with the flourishing of disinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has only reinforced the project consortium’s certitude that this kind of project is needed more than ever. The ultimate aim of this project is to provide youth (information) workers with resources and tools to carry out MIL related activities with young people, to equip them with the necessary skills to navigate the information that they come into contact with every day. MedYIa will be need-based, as it will focus on the needs of the youth sector and of young people themselves; this will be more detailed in Intellectual Output 1 (IO1 state of play: survey on young people’s MIL needs and an Open Dialogue Day with professionals based on the needs identified in the survey). This first phase will lead to a deeper understanding of the subject, an identification of missing skills and gaps in the sector, an identification of existing tools and practices, and what types of tools would be most useful for those working with young people. The survey will be widely disseminated in at least the three languages ​​of the project partners (French, German and English). The final report will provide recommendations to decision-makers, institutional bodies and professionals in youth work and youth information work.Once the results of the state of play have been analysed, the project consortium will work on creating an interactive online toolbox (IO2), which will be full of MIL resources and tools, grouped and sorted by theme for a simple and easy navigation. This interactive toolbox will be publicly available, and regularly updated. It will gather resources in French, German and English for a wider outreach, and it will be unique as it will not just have all kinds of resources and activities listed; they will be carefully selected, standardised and grouped by theme. 3 partners will organise a training day in their region / country / community intended for youth information professionals and educators. In one day, the participants will discover the toolbox in a fun and participative way that leads to open and constructive discussions, compiles feedback to improve it, and facilitates its use among professionals working in the field. Participants will then be able to deliver the training, which will ensure a multiplier effect. This activity is aimed at professionals who work in the field directly with young people. A day will also be organised for young people, to ensure that the resources are useful and relevant to them, and to compile their feedback to better adapt the tools. Their feedback will also help to begin creating the next part of the project. The project partners will create a video tutorial that will cover some MIL theory and basics (IO3). It will introduce the topic to youth information professionals and demonstrate how to use the tools and resources available on the platform. The online toolbox will showcase existing tools and adapt them to the needs of the target group. The idea will be to optimise on what has already been created in this domain, while providing a theoretical and deeper understanding of the topic. Where possible, resources will provide options for carrying out activities through digital youth work. Finally, a multiplier event will be organised in Brussels at the end of the project targeted at youth information professionals, youth workers, educators, youth organisations, young people, professional youth networks, political bodies, organisations working in the MIL field, and any other interested party. It will showcase what has been produced in the framework of the project to the target group and other stakeholders outside of the project partnership (e.g. other countries, other organisations). It will highlight the importance of media and information literacy and youth information, as well as the need to support youth professionals through training, and access to tools and resources in these fields. Equipping professionals and multipliers, such as youth organisations, will help to ensure that young people can develop the critical thinking and skills necessary to navigate the information landscape, and contribute to producing and sharing digital content responsibly.

<< Objectives >>Enhance the mental health literacy of youth workersEquip youth workers to identify youth mental health distress, provide first-hand support, and refer them to specialised services if neededFoster cooperation among mental health experts, youth and youth workersShare good practice to learn from experiences in different countriesFight against the mental health stigma Foster a peer-to-peer approach to mental health Guide the adoption of measures at different levels to support youth mental heal<< Implementation >>Survey (2.1) for youth workers to identify mental health literacy levelsGuide (2.2) for youth workers on identifying youth in distress, providing first-hand support, and knowing when to refer them to specialised services4 podcasts (2.3) for youth workers produced by experts and young peopleScreening young people's mental health needs through gamification (3.1)Campaign (3.2) to reverse the mental health stigmaJoint seminar (4.3) with stakeholders. Stakeholders’ recommendations (4.4)<< Results >>YiMinds will develop resources to equip youth workers to identify youth at risk and provide first-hand support. We will consider the specific needs of more vulnerable groups (i.e. difficult family backgrounds, refugees, migrants, minorities, disabilities, etc). The involvement of young people throughout YiMinds, namely in the podcasts, mental health resilience toolkit, awareness-raising campaign, recommendations and seminar will contribute to European youth active citizenship and participation.

Youth information and counselling services provide high-quality guidance to young people and help them make decisions to lead their lives constructively. These services have also a remarkable preventive function that constitutes a great added value to society. Despite the importance of youth information (YI) in supporting young people to achieve their full potential and to access their rights, it is still difficult for many youth information and counselling providers to effectively promote and reach the vast majority of young people that do not take advantage of these services. The purpose of service design thinking is to conceive or re-think services according to the needs of the user, so that it is user-friendly, needs-based, competitive and relevant to the target group.The consortium re-thought youth information provision through the application of this innovative methodology, which will ensure a youth-centred and empowering approach. The tools and resources created in the project are based on evidence, consultations with young people and stakeholders, and research. The toolkit on service design in youth information provision includes both theory and practice, tools, quality measures, and is based on a methodology widely tested in other fields. The project involved YI providers, young people, and experts in training, innovative communication and service design. Using desk research and focus groups to ensure the project results are evidence-based and reflect the needs and trends of young people, the expected results were:- To produce an online course on service design in youth information delivery (using webinars, contributions from external experts, videos and other digital tools, particularly those used by young people) to be incorporated into the ERYICA training system;- To create a toolkit on service design in youth information provision aiming to conceive more youth-friendly and effective YI services; and - To test and pilot the resources developed at different stages and in order for the partners to produce their own YI strategy (7 strategies) based on service design methodologies. These will be used as good practice examples for other youth information services across Europe. The ultimate objective of the project was to enable young people to become well-informed citizens and autonomous decision-makers through quality information and guidance. Access to information is unprecedented and brings with it a previously unseen tendency to also want to create media content, often in a biased and uncontrolled manner. Despite the abundance of information sources available to young people, it is not always easy for them to process and understand the information accessed. Youth information services provide assistance to young people, helping them to make to understand the information they access and to take informed decisions adapted to their personal needs. Educating young people on media and information literacy have also become key task of youth information and counselling services. Youth information services are fully equipped to advise young people on how to research, evaluate and appreciate information and how reliable it is. YI services are available to every single young person, free of charge, and have a real impact on shaping their future. However, not all young people are aware that these services are available to them. The aim of this project was to create strategies, tools and resources to allow youth information providers to reach out to a maximum number of young people, especially those at risk of social exclusion, and to let them know that these services exist and are centred on their needs. In order to do this, professionals need to be trained on new channels and tools, and services need to be user-centred, appealing, relevant and visible. The target group is youth information providers who wish to discover new outreach tools and to re-think service delivery. This project explored new avenues for youth work, through its use of evidence-based research and innovative service design methodologies. The focus was also on the active participation of young people throughout every stage of the project, using a user-centred service design approach to actively listen to and involve them in the service conception. It aimed to ensure that all young people, regardless of their situation, benefit from youth information and counselling services, and are therefore aware of the multitude of opportunities that are available to them. The resulting tools and strategies were created, piloted and evaluated by young people, youth workers and service design experts. The results of the desk research, the toolkit and the online course are ready to be used and exploited by youth information providers across Europe.

Transnational strategic partnership project “Youth.Info: Future Youth Information Toolbox” aims to increase quality and outreach of youth information services on local level by creating and applying user-friendly methods on evidence and future based youth information needs and involving peer-to-peer youth information educators. Youth information and counselling field lacks research on youth information needs and its service impact. Youth field in general has been rather reactive and not future-looking proactive service provider. Future foresight methodology successfully works in other policy areas however has never been adapted for the field of youth (information) work. There are several effective information services already developed on the European level. Exchange on it and creating of design-thinking based approach to the service development is still missing. Peer-to-peer work in youth information has been already explored as an optimal support for reaching out new target groups, however there are still no empowering tools for youth information workers on the local level. Therefore this project targets to: 1) research and understand youth information needs by building on existing research design (ERYICA, 2013); 2) explore possibilities for applying future foresight in the youth information work and provide insights on what challenges in the field are to come; 3) develop, co-create and pilot 3 open user-friendly, evidence and future based youth information services, that could be used by local youth information providers; 4) empower youth information workers and peer educators to use participative peer-to-peer approaches in delivering youth information services and therewith increase the reach-out and awareness of young people on specific topics; 5) build political awareness on the impact of youth information and counselling and support development of national youth information structures in Latvia and Lithuania. This project involves youth information workers (8) and peer educators (25) from Germany, Austria, Ireland, Latvia and Lithuania as also reaches-out to even more practitioners through ERYICA and EPTO networks. Project’s academic partner Abo Akademi University (Finland) ensures the evidence and future based research as also evaluation of the project. Project starts with the youth information needs survey and service impact research activities. It will continue with exploration of the use of the future foresight methodology in the youth information field. Pilot foresight activity will be conducted on European level, involving all relevant stakeholders in a participative manner. This will lead to reports on youth information needs and future perspectives to be taken into account. Based on this evidence, three different information services/products will be created by national youth information coordinators involved and piloted by their partners in other project countries. This is done based on design-thinking methodology. After collecting feedback during the meeting, products will be finalized and released for public use by local youth information workers. European peer training organization (EPTO) will elaborate a training course for empowering youth peer educators to use services created and to multiply them to rather marginalized target audiences. This will be evaluated throughout the project and presented in a high-level visibility event, that will bring policy-makers, practitioners, young people and researchers to highlight the impact youth information and counselling services have. Further dissemination activities will ensure that the insights from research, guidelines on how to conduct foresight activities, information services and the peer-to-peer training course are sustainably used by ERYICA and EPTO network members as also other practitioners and researchers. Main results of this project are reports on youth information needs and future challenges, three innovative, evidence and future based information delivery services, manual of a training course for peer-to-peer in the youth information work. This will lead to the following impact: youth information workers will build their capacity through understanding changing information needs and behaviours of their target group. Local and national youth information providers will be empowered to use future foresight and design-thinking approaches in their service development. More young people will be reached out to and informed on for them relevant topics by young peer educators and peer-to-peer work. On the political scale, both on European and national levels awareness of the added value created by youth information services will become more visible. This will be expressed in the support for the development of national youth information structures in Latvia and Lithuania.