Find your path!

Background The idea is to jointly create a tool that can be used as an exercise among youth and professionals, aiming at acting out different situations and processes that can model situations and events that occur in youth community development. The aim of the exercise is to provide young people, communities and professionals with knowledge transfer, community and play experience, and a taste of local youth community development and youth work practices, thus strengthening their community and the achievement of their goals. The target group of the project: class communities, youth organisations, small communities, youth work professionals, teachers. There are few municipalities where youth work is carried out in a similar way, so our aim was to bring together different levels and types of experience within the project to create a new quality. Lavina's pedagogical, especially drama pedagogical toolkit, the film-theatre experience all contribute to FIRE's experience in local youth work theory and youth self-governance. The knowledge of the two organisations adds up in a way that they complement each other like a puzzle. Cooperation and partnership are also strengthened by differences: different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and experience in local youth work, which can shed light on issues, problems or solutions that are not visible to the other partner. Objectives The first goal of our project was to develop a tool that could be useful for all communities with programme (event) delivery in their profile, regardless of their level of experience: communities that are just starting out and those that are more experienced. With our project, we also aimed to build on our organisational strengths to exchange experiences (FIRE youth community organising; Lavina, pedagogy, drama pedagogy) that would help each other's organisations and communities to develop. Both organisations have professional contacts, which we have shared with each other in the project (FIRE- has a strong professional and civil network, Lavina- has good contacts with student governments), which has allowed us to disseminate the results of the project more widely, leading to further collaborations in the future. One of its main achievements has been to increase the visibility and recognition of the organisations at local level, among target groups and in professional circles. By holding one of the dissemination events locally in the associations' municipalities, to which local professionals (teachers, NGO leaders, community organisers) and young people were invited, in addition to the municipal authorities. In addition, the multiplication events in Maribor, Ljubljana, Pécs and Budapest provided an excellent opportunity for further networking and planning of future joint projects. Implementation Four main activities were carried out during the project. The project meetings focused on game development, game design and game feasibility. In between the project meetings, we carried out testing sessions with local youth communities and professionals to test the game, the experiences of which were incorporated into the implementation of the game during the subsequent project meetings. An important part of the project was the implementation of the intellectual product, involving professionals and graphic designers with experience in the youth field. The final stage of the project was the multiplication events, during which the game was presented to youth professionals, community organisers and university students. Achievements One big tangible result of our project is the Find your Path! board game. In the board game, the players are young people from a small town who have to complete individual and community missions. To complete the missions, they have to go to different locations in the town (municipality, market, school, hospital, camp, etc.) and collect resources there. Players can choose to play the game in several sessions, tailoring it to their individual and community needs and curiosity, and gain experience in organising events. We have succeeded in creating a board game that helps communities to implement their ideas, or even to define their ideas. Through individual and collective tasks, players can encounter events that they might encounter in real life while organising any event. Throughout the game they have to cooperate and work together to achieve the goals they have chosen. An important element of the game is the joint evaluation at the end, where they can share not only the game but also their own opportunities in real life and their own needs, and start a collective reflection on what they can do for their own community, how they can be active citizens. The game was designed to be used in as many different ways and in as many different environments as possible. The simplest version can be tried out in a classroom setting, while those who want a more challenging game can find different challenges. In addition to this, the description of the game includes suggestions for youth workers and teachers on how to use board games to support young people's learning.