EduLabs: New tools for future youth work

<< Background >>We applied for the EduLabs project to address the pressing need for mainstreaming innovations in non-formal education in youth work. The rapidly changing world and the ongoing pandemic have underscored the necessity for youth workers to seamlessly integrate innovative methodologies into their daily activities with young people. Moreover, language barriers and limited accessibility prevent many youth workers from utilizing resources available on European level, mostly in English. Our project aimed to overcome these obstacles and support youth workers in incorporating innovative tools both online and offline, particularly focusing on those with language challenges.The needs addressed encompass enhancing the competences of youth workers in innovating their activities for both online and face-to-face interactions. Recognizing the challenges faced by youth workers with language limitations, the project strived to make innovative tools highly inclusive, ensuring easy accessibility, understanding, and usability for workers and young people with special needs. By providing a website with methods, podcasts, videos, and MOOC, EduLabs aimed to inspire youth workers with new approaches, trends, and methods.<< Objectives >>The EduLabs project aimed to modernize non-formal education in youth work by bringing innovative tools directly to the doorstep of youth workers. The primary objectives included increasing the competences of youth workers to innovate their activities, both online and face-to-face. The project sought to create a sustainable online platform with various methods the youth workers can use, available in national languages. The description offers insights into adapting methodologies for diverse settings and individuals with special needs, if relevant.The specific objectives were:- to increase competences of youth workers to innovate their daily activities with young people (on-line and face to face) - to make the innovative tools highly inclusive: easily reachable, understandable, easy to use and available for workers with special needs and applicable - for young people with special needs - to inspire youth workers with new approaches, trends and methods they can use in their daily work - to ensure the sustainability and usability of the results of this project through dissemination and supporting youth workers to multiply the outputs to their peers<< Implementation >>Implementation activities included:- creation of a website with information about non-formal education and various approaches, methodologies and techniques that help improve quality and innovate the youth workers’ activities with young people. The content is available in Czech, English, Finnish and Portuguese. Not all the parts are in all the languages - only the parts relevant in their national contexts were translated). The website is available at: https://www.nonformal-education.eu/- podcasts about various topics connected to innovations and trends in youth work. There are:> 7 new podcasts in English “Talking Youth Work” (https://humak.podbean.com/) - topics such as Learning Experience Design (Niels Floor), Self-Directed Learning (Paul Kloosterman), How to tackle war-related topics in non-formal learning (Michael Kimming), Learning Environments (Snežana Bačlija Knoch), E-sports in Youth Work (Jan Lai), Queer Youth Work (Vika Matuzaitė), eduScrum (Mark Postema). The podcasts have reached nearly 2000 downloads so far.> 16 podcasts recorded on national levels (https://edulabs.podbean.com/): >> Portuguese - topics: Participatory Action Research (Filipe Alves), Formal and Non-formal Education (Heloísa Pugliese), Creation and production of pedagogical tools (Ana Rita Camara)>> Finnish - topics: Mobile Youth Work (Aino Tormulainen), Educational/Pedagogical Escape games (Juuso Armila), Digital games - threat or opportunity (Nina-Elise Koivumäki), Territories of Youth (Pauliina Lampela)>> Slovak - topics: Youth Futures 2035 (English and Slovak - 2 language versions, Alena Tomanová), Mirror of the soul (Marta Hanecáková), LARP - game of democracy (Alexandra Kurišová), Virtual Reality in Education (Mikuláš Štubna)>> Czech - topics: Sustainable degrowth (Tadeáš Žďárský), eduScrum in practice (Lucie Smolková), Gamification and break-out boxes (Filip Gábor), Learning to Learn (Jolana Dočkalová)- podcasts in English are also transcribed in written form so the information are available for people with hearing impairment. Also, some of the older Talking Youth Work podcasts that are still relevant have been transcribed and even translated into national languages to make the information available.- 3 videos in international sign language about current trends in working with people with hearing impairment have been recorded, translated into international sign language if needed (they were recorded in Finnish sign language)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVBrFIXiRhEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfbI_RMQKVchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOl7H6YRzw- e-learning - MOOC for individuals, teams and organisations in youth work about how to innovate their activities from small steps to bigger changes in their approach. 8 modules include text, interactive games, forums, handout and suggestions for exercises and videos. https://hop.salto-youth.net/courses/InnovationTools Three partners' meetings and 12 multiplication events for 258 participants facilitated the introduction of project results. Continuous promotion and dissemination activities further contributed to achieving the outlined objectives.<< Results >>The impact of the outputs described above was substantial, reaching est. 4000 youth workers and benefiting around 40000 young people (expecting that every youth worker has in average at least 10 young people that were influenced thanks to outputs of this project). Through EduLabs, youth workers (and other related target groups as social workers and teachers) are better prepared, flexible, and capable of engaging young people effectively. The innovative methods introduced made their activities more entertaining, engaging, effective, open, and inclusive. Ultimately, these changes made positive influence on the young people - the activities the activities respond better to their needs, current trends and developments, have bigger impact on their learning and competence development. We believe thanks to that, we have made our contribution to a more motivated, prepared, and tolerant younger generation, ready to engage actively in their communities and pursue lifelong learning.Participating organizations benefited significantly from the project's positive influence. Professional capacities in innovations and collaboration with universities were strengthened. Competences in project management and team cooperation were developed, contributing to ongoing learning despite the experience gained from previous projects. The project expanded the audience and network of supporters and followers, particularly during the dissemination phase. Participating organizations gained valuable experiences in digital youth work tools, including the website creation, podcasts production, MOOC creation, and live streaming. Also, the partners have experienced how much capacity does it take to make all the outputs more inclusive - make subtitles, transcriptions, translations take enormous capacity despite the use of modern technologies and it is needed to think about all this when preparing any outputs in the future, as we agreed inclusivity is one of our common crucial values.