Digital Tools: to Engage, to Empower, to Connect

<< Background >>‘Mission: Reconnect’, Czechia, and ‘ASK-Skopje’, North Macedonia applied for the project ‘Digital Tools: to Engage, to Empower, to Connect’ with the motivation to increase capacities of both organizations in the area of digital youth work. In this context, the organizations aimed to get to know new digital tools, and develop competencies of the staff and organization’s members to use these digital tools regularly when working with young people, youth workers, and representatives of the educational sector on their personal and professional development but also when attracting community members to join their activities and cooperating with the representatives of other sectors. Through the 15-month project, we aimed to address the following needs: to wider the portfolio of digital tools used by both organizations, to increase the capacities of both organizations to use digital tools to create interactive and engaging activities targeting young people, promote the work of the organizations, establish new contacts and increase their capacities needed to administrate projects supported by the Erasmus + Programme. << Objectives >>The project ‘Digital Tools: to Engage, to Empower, to Connect’ aimed to achieve the following:-to increase the capacities of both organizations to use digital tools to develop the competencies of young people: to get to know new tools that the organizations can use in their work e.g., when delivering online workshops, and training but also when aiming to get to know the needs of the young people; to increase the skills of the organization’s members to actively and effectively use these tools at their daily work and also to encourage the staff members to be proactive and look for new possibilities that the digital tools offers;-to increase the abilities of the organizations to use digital tools to make the organization’s work more visible and engage with wider communities, e.g., by using tools to create promotional and visibility materials;-to strengthen the position of the organizations in their communities, make them more attractive to young people but also to promote themselves at local, and international levels to create new contacts, and establish partnerships with a special focus to be paid to cross-sectorial cooperation, especially with the educational sector which is essential to both organizations. << Implementation >>Within the project ‘Digital Tools: to Engage, to Empower, to Connect’ we implemented in total five activities. In the application, we planned to implement four activities but we decided to add one more, job shadowing, to support the partnership-building element and exchanging practices.During the project, we combined local and international activities. Both organizations were getting to know the needs and interests of the target groups through focus groups and questionnaires realized at the local level under the activities ‘Digital Tools: Engage, Empower, Connect I. North Macedonia’ and ‘Digital Tools: Engage, Empower, Connect II. Czechia. At the international level, the representatives of the target groups (youth workers, young people, teachers/career counselors) met during the international ‘Tool Lab Event’ that had a form of training. Afterward, both organizations implemented an ‘Online Mentoring Program: Engage, Empower, Connect’ that included online sessions in English, Macedonian, and the Czech language. Additionally, we included in the activities ‘Job Shadowing’ providing members of the organizations an opportunity to learn from each other work and practices by joining the activities and exploring the local context. << Results >>The project ‘Digital Tools: to Engage, to Empower, to Connect’ reached the following results:-increased understanding of the perceptions of young people, youth workers, and teachers on the digital tools through focus groups (in total with 83 participants) and questionnaires (‘ASK-Skopje’ gathered 98 answers, ‘Mission: Reconnect’ 105 answers);-better understanding of the perspectives of young people, youth workers, and representatives of the educational sector on digital tools and their active use in the context of personal and professional development, in the international ‘Tool Lab Event’ took part 21 participants in total;-realized one ‘Online Mentoring Program’ that included 16 online lessons in English common for the participants from both organizations, Czech and Macedonian. Key lessons learned from ‘Online Mentoring Program’ were also made available to a wider public through 12 video tutorials published on the YouTube channel of the applicant ‘Mission: Reconnect, https://www.youtube.com/@teamreconnect2551/featured, and shared through networks of both organizations;-realized ‘Job Shadowing’ that provided four participants the opportunity to directly learn from the practices of the partner organization.