Gems of Youth Work

Background The rapid increase of European funding being allocated into the youth sector in the last decade through programmes such as Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps has given way to a wide array of exciting initiatives in the international youth work scene, and contributed to the development of inspiring professionals and organizations, many of whom changed their life drastically thanks to the international dimension added by such programmes. Yet, there is not a concrete platform to collect those stories at an international level and a lot of great practices and inspirations are being lost in the never ending news feed or are scattered around the Internet in various languages, websites and formats. It would be a shame to have all these stories, ideas, achievements (and failures!) stay in their own bubble. There is just so much value in these stories not to amplify them and share them across borders. Thus, "Gems of Youth Work" was created to gather stories from trainers, youth work practitioners, organizations and active young people to share them in the form of podcasts and graphic recordings to make these stories alive, attractive and able to reach a large audience via online channels. Objectives The "Gems of Youth Work" strategic partnership aims to gather youth field stories in a form of podcasts and interviews to share them amongst practitioners of the international and national youth work fields to foster exchange of good practices and promote the value and recognition of international youth work at national levels. The strategic partnership sets the next objectives: - To gather a database of inspiring, innovative and interesting stories of youth work projects and approaches and their implementers; - To design a podcast and graphic recording approach to present the gathered stories in an appealing way to the audience; - To promote organizations and practitioners contributing to the development of the youth work field; - To promote the recognition of international youth work amongst national youth work bodies. Implementation The strategic partnership included an international training activity and 3 transnational project meetings as well as local physical and online activities dedicated to podcast creation and graphic recording promoting cases and activists behind international youth work projects & transnational initiatives. Achievements The strategic partnership project was dedicated to promoting best practices in youth work and promoting the recognition of international youth work via spreading stories of cases of grassroots and other international initiatives to local youth work stakeholders in a form of podcasts and graphic recordings. As a result this project have produced a series of 25 podcasts promoting international youth work projects and practices done under Erasmus+ and other funding schemes. Each of the podcasts had also a graphic recording in a form of a digital summary of the podcast created by a graphic recorder. Each recording has the intro to the case & key learning moments and ideas from the podcasts. The compilation of these podcasts have been put together in digital books promoting the recognition of international youth work. At the end of the project there were two more outcomes created a short video introducing the project and its learning points as well as a visual summary of the project results with the overview. Project results can be accessed at: www.shokkin.org/gems-of-youth-work