Mainstreaming Media Literacy and Thinking Competences in Youth Work

Background This project exists to create new tools that serve to help as many youth organizations as possible to focus on two skills that we consider to be of great value and importance. The selection of 2 specific competencies, despite their complexity, serves as a strategy to draw attention and raise awareness about their value and helps us to create activities, tools, and techniques that can be used by other entities, so that they integrate these competencies into their activities. The needs related to the acquisition, improvement, and recognition of these competencies are obvious to us and we must refer to the digital, social, and educational context, such as the oversupply of information and the extensive use of digital technologies. Thinking is a capacity whose potential is far from the contents of regulated training and we consider it absolutely necessary to make known different ways of thinking that can open up new opportunities for creative, innovative, disruptive, and entrepreneurial thinking that allows finding solutions and answers to complexity and difficulty of the challenges that affect young people and society as a whole. Objectives The objectives of the project have been maintained throughout its duration. The general objectives are: - Recognize and give value to media literacy and thinking skills as two driving forces to build more inclusive, just, peaceful, and sustainable societies, as relevant sources of continuous learning, and as triggers for the active participation of young people, as well as their close relationships. -Promote non-formal and intercultural learning as a valid framework and methodology for the development of said competencies. -Collect and build new innovative educational resources that promote both skills in a European-level framework and widely disseminate the manual created and tested by the entities themselves throughout the project, in association with other entities and partners in the field of their exercise. We see these objectives as possible solutions to the various challenges related to the lack of media literacy and reading skills and critical analysis of the media, as well as thinking, both in general and specifically (systemic, creative/lateral). Implementation To date, we have carried out the set of planned activities. We held 6 preparatory online meetings before holding the first transnational meeting, which took place online, on November 9 and 15, 2021. We have jointly carried out the preparation of the learning activity, from 16 to 21 February 2022 in Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona, Spain) in which have participated 19 people (all those foreseen, except for two representatives from Italy, due to the change of the Italian partner 2 weeks before the activity started). All participants had the foreseen profile (including 5 out of 5 members of the international team). The 5 entities carried out the planned research tasks internally, shared information, and involved some of their collaborators. In the following months, they organized at least 2 local activities as planned in the respective cities, with the participation of the expected number of young people, at least 10 per activity, 100 people in total (actually 135). We recruited the people who facilitated the activities and involved the team of experts, who met on the occasion of the 2nd transnational meeting, which took place in Amarante (Portugal) from July 17 to 20, with the participation of 9 people, 2 less than expected. Achievements The main results of the project have been the creation of capacities among the promoting entities, with various people assuming specific tasks and responsibilities. This has developed and improved their capacities to organize new activities dedicated to both competencies. We have supported the participation of interested people, several examples being young people who had never before taken on the responsibility of facilitating workshops, and writing activities, for whom participating in the project is an intense learning experience. Said improvement of capacities can be applied to people with various responsibilities in entities that are going to organize new activities, whose contents will deal with both skills, and who have met and collaborated with new entities and organizations, improving their informal networks. The main results are the learning of the people who have participated in the international training and in the local activities, of which effect we have the proof of the comments and written evaluations, as well as the manual for trainers of youth organizations, whose free access, in online and in 8 languages.