Learning by Doing Good - Supporting Learning through Youth-led Community Projects

<< Background >>We applied for this project to advance both organisations’ practices of supporting young people in implementing youth-led community engagement actions, as a tool that contributes both to participatory learning of young people and to community development. At the same time, youth workers had the need to develop their competencies in supporting young people's experiential learning processes through the design and implementation of youth-led community engagement actions enabling their self-directed learning from those actions. Both organisations had the need to systemize their existing knowledge related to young people’s participatory learning, community engagement and active participation through the creation of an innovative and more structured approach to informal learning. In this way, sustainable mechanisms of active participation and involvement of young people in organisations’ activities and community were developed and the visibility of organisations in the field of youth work was enhanced. Both organisations needed to strengthen external networks and partnership in serving communities and broadening society by promoting innovative youth-led practices thus stressing the importance of different youth work approaches.<< Objectives >>Through the implementation of the project activities, we wanted to improve both organisations’ practices of supporting young people in implementing youth-led community engagement actions, as a tool that contributes both to participatory learning of young people and to community development. We wanted to make the learning process more participatory in relation to young people included, and to put focus on supporting young people to plan and organise their learning objectives and processes, based on which they would decide how to design and implement their community-based projects. We also wanted to provide the youth workers with necessary competences and skills to support the process of self-assessment and planning of the learning objectives of young people, and then facilitate the process of developing their community-based projects. The project practice was systemized in a set of guidelines which can be followed in other activities aimed at empowering young people to actively participate, as well as in the training of youth workers. By implementation of project activities and creation of diverse and new content within local communities, the visibility of organisations and youth work at local level was enhanced.<< Implementation >>We implemented all of the foresaw activities: coordination activities among partners and the elaboration of Guidelines, the 7 days long international training for 10 youth workers (5 Slovenian and 5 Croatian), the activity of designing of the training for young participants, 2 National trainings for young participants (10 participants in Slovenia, 8 participants in Croatia), the activities of designing and implementation of the youth-led community engagement actions (3 in Croatia and 6 in Slovenia) with continuous mentoring support (individual and group) provided by youth workers and the 3 days international study and evaluation meeting in Ljubljana which involved the project coordination team, youth workers, and young people who designed and implemented youth-led community engagement actions in the local community. The promotion and dissemination activities were going on during the whole period of project implementation: promotion of project activities on social media profiles and in direct contacts with possible participants, public calls for participants for project activities with young people, surveys in local communities (needs assessments), youth-led community actions.<< Results >>The main project output was that both partner organisations advanced their practices of supporting young people in implementing youth-led community engagement actions thus contributing both to participatory learning of young people and to community development. It occurred through 3 project results: 1) The organisations, through the analysis of their existing approaches, methodologies and practices, improved capacities for supporting participatory project-based learning; 2) 10 youth workers improved their competencies in the fields of participatory planning of learning objectives and facilitating and supporting young people’s learning process through the process of planning and implementation of the community actions; 3) 18 Young participants had the possibility to critically assess their needs and interests, plan personal learning objectives and actively participate by developing and implementing community actions contributing thus to the achievement of the pre-planned learning objectives, with continuous support by youth workers. The implementation of all project activities resulted in development of Guidelines for supporting active participation of young people within the local community through youth-led actions.