Go visual - designing educational tools for youth empowerment

Background Within the international youth work community, there was a need to increase the level of involvement of diverse target groups, most of them with fewer opportunities and at risk of exclusion in the learning process, in the international and local activities of the Erasmus+ and ESC programmes. Many methods in the field of youth work are too abstract to be understood by young people with special needs or even those for whom English is not their mother tongue. The Go VISUAL project aimed to equip trainers, educators and youth workers with the tools and skills to use visual methods in their local and international work in non-formal education, non-formal education, and to strengthen the integration of young people with fewer opportunities. Our aim was to support participants in international projects to reflect on and define their acquired key competences through the use of visual methods. An equally important aim was to enhance the competences of the youth workers themselves, by adding visual tools to the existing set of ETS competences to support reflection and understanding of each competence. Objectives The aims of the project were to: -increase the skills of trainers, educators and youth workers to include young people with fewer opportunities in international projects through the use of visual methods, - to develop innovative and high-quality tools for youth workers, educators and trainers in order to strengthen young people's readiness to learn -Increase the value of international projects for those involved through a more effective use of the Youthpass self-reflection tool - increase the effectiveness of youth workers in reaching out to groups with fewer opportunities -develop the learning environment through the use of visual language and easy text as equivalent modes of expression. Implementation Activities - international work on intellectual creations leading to final results : 1.Needs analysis of the target group "Go VISUAL - introduction to visual preferences". 2.Creation of a set of 2 visual tools taking into account the key competences of 62 Youthpass and 72 selected from ETS. The tool consists of: illustrations of each competence (some have more than 1 illustration, a total of 148 illustrations were created), collected in 2 sets - Youthpass and ETS illustrations of the introductory cards (3) past path illustrations (tracks) - 10 and future path illustrations (bubbles) - 10 Me Card - for taking notes of your reflections Glossary (guide to the illustrated ETS and Youthpass competences) 3.Conducting an international training - testing prototypes of visual methods . The training took place in Spala (PL) 4.Creation of a handbook on visual competences and metaphor, with 10 workshop scenarios developed and implemented by the Ambassadors and 10 videos 5.Organisation of 2 local dissemination events in each country and 1 international webinar. 6.Development of an online version of the MeTime tool available at https://metimecards.eu/. Achievements The main outcome of the project is the creation of a visual toolkit taking into account the Youthpass key competences and those selected from ETS. The tool consists of: 148 illustrations of each competence collected in 2 sets - Youthpass and ETS + a set of cards to support the work process. The second result of the project is an on line tool www.metimecards.eu , identical to the stationary version. The 3rd hard result of the project is the methodological and content guide "Time to look at competence", containing 10 scenarios for the use of the tool The website www.go-visual.eu/metime where all the tools developed above are available to download The soft outcomes are first of all an increase of knowledge and skills of youth workers in the area of using visual tools to involve young people with fewer opportunities in the process of reflection on the key competences developed by them during the international and local projects (the recipients were equipped with a specific methodology) and to improve their own competences. As a result, the project has led to an increase in the quality of activities with young people in terms of developing key competences and modern working methods.