New Global Learning - Youth Workers as Global

Background This project aims to support youth workers and youth organizations in facilitating learning and informed discussion about complex global issues, inspiring active citizenship. Young people are taking on today’s most pressing issues - they are advocating for a greener, sustainable future, women’s, LGBTQ, and minority rights, an end to discrimination, and wealth inequality. Some question or even oppose those movements. Unfortunately, they have more access to fake news and echo chambers perpetuating specific points of view than they do to education that tackles the local and global issues that are relevant now. Formal education available to the youth, especially in lower-income EU countries or countries where populist policies have a strong influence on education, often does not cover present-day or “controversial” issues. Non-formal education can fill that gap and provide for exciting global learning opportunities in areas where there are currently no such options. However, these issues are transdisciplinary, complex, and difficult for youth workers to tackle and support young people in navigating them without proper support. As members of an international network of 22 youth organizations, we created this project as a direct response to youth workers' needs. A survey taken by 129 youth workers from 18 countries outlined the struggles they face in helping young people navigate complex global issues. Supporting learning and informed discussion on a wide range of topics such as artificial intelligence, gender norms, different approaches to the climate crisis, or the friction between some cultural practices and European values is proving to be difficult, especially considering the fact that youth workers themselves are coming from highly specialized formal educational backgrounds where a narrow scope of topics was covered. What youth workers need is a set of methods, case studies, and exercises they can use to analyze those topics when working with young people. All of these topics fall under the umbrella of global learning, an established educational concept denoting teaching and learning processes that aim to increase global awareness, tolerance and responsibility, sustainable development and green transformation, support young people in approaching the world's challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives, and wrestling with the ethical implications of differential power and privilege across the globe. It has the potential to create a firm foundation for responsible and active citizenship. While general global learning guidelines for educators exist, this project sets out to build on those foundations through innovative and digital methods, as well as by providing youth organizations with replicable training modules for youth workers and trainers. Through this project, the organizations in this