"Mapping professional open youth work (in Europe)The project created a strategic partnership for working on underlying principles and concrete tools for mapping professional open youth work in Europe as of today. It gathered ten partners from nine different countries coming from diverse backgrounds - we managed to have partners from the non-formal and the formal education sector as well as grass root youth work and umbrella organisations. It gave this part of youth work the room for professional debate on the core profile of their work as well as some tools for online discussion and showcasing of professional open youth work. It therefore had two pillars that were closely linked to each other:1) Debate and Description of „Principles of Professional Open Youth Work in Europe“The partnership engaged in a very serious discussion about a common defintion and underlying principles of professional open youth work and worked on a document that would respect the various national and background realities and create a clearer profile of this profession in Europe. The result of this process is a ""Declaration of Principles"" which was published and disseminated in September 2016. Read more about the process and the result here: http://magazine.poywe.org/magazine/logbook-issue-3/mapping-a-profession/2) Online platform for debate, capacity building and dissemination of knowledge about professional open youth work in Europe consisting of:The LOGBOOK Platform that was created within this project aims on the one hand to enable exchange of experience and good practice and on the other hand on show casing what Professional Open Youth Work is and what effects it has in Europe today. For achieving this aim it features several things:a) The LOGBOOK E-Magazine was created and three editions were published during the project duration. It features descriptions of the state of the art of youth work in all participating countries, one hot topic per issue (1. radicalisation of young people and the role of open youth work, 2. professional open youth work and young refugees and 3. youth work as a profession), news and information about training, methods and interviews with young people and youth workers.b) A video channel with short videos that explain professional open youth work from different angles - currently there is 19 interviews with youth workers and experts from 12 countries.c) Debate and exchange of experience - to widen the debate we have also created a space for webinars, where we have discussed the final version of our declaration of principles with interested participants.Apart from this concrete results the project helped to build a stronger network of professional open youth work in Europe that is going to be active and in touch also after the end of this partnership. Several participants of the closing event announced that they will translate the ""Declaration of Principiles in their own languages for making it even more accesible for youth workers in their own country. The LOGBOOK Platform will stay and POYWE plans to keep publishing the E-Magazine, continue uploading video interviews that show what professional open youth work is doing and provide webinars for youth workers."

Policy, research and practice have all equally observed both high need and great pressure to improve the education and training regarding digitalisation in youth work. Our project “Digitalisation: from spaces of fear to spaces of freedom” responds to this need and translates the triangle of policy, research and practice into its project design.Through our project, we develop a systemic approach that adapts the European Reference Framework for Digital Competences (DigComp) for the training of youth workers on digitalisation in a two-step methodology.The first step is the qualification of youth workers as competent digital actors in the context of their own professional community. To this end, we adapt the European Union’s Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp in its current version 2.1) to the context of youth work. We develop a self-assessment instrument for youth workers, then design curricula as well as open educational resources for modular trainings on the competence areas of the framework, test the curricula and resources in pilot modules, and then publish the refined curricula and resources under a free license for use by the entire youth sector.The second step is the qualification of youth workers as specialists on digitalisation in youth work. To this end, we translate the recommendations of the European Commission’s Expert Group on “Digitalisation and Youth” into practice, and again develop curricula as well as open educational resources to address the competence areas identified by the expert group, test them, and make the final versions available under a free license.We support the recognition of the learning youth workers acquire through our modules by developing a youth-work-specific version of the DigComp certification process (DigCompYouthWork).An accompanying podcast will address the challenges as well as the potentials of digitalisation for youth work in a decisively unagitated manner, and contribute to a calmer and more informed discourse on digitalisation.A sector-wide conference on digitalisation in youth work will conclude the project and lead to the creation of a European network on digital youth work.Feel free to visit our project website at digitalyouthwork.org.

"Rebel with a Cause is a project that aims to explore the use of creative methods within youth work, strengthen the bond to organisations that are active in different art forms and show young people how art influences the way society is thinking. Giving young people - especially those with lesser opportunities - a voice is one of the core aims of any professional youth work. Therefore showing young people how you can state your opinion in a peaceful way and still influence society is of great interest to all youth workers. Also during the COVID crisis now in 2020 we do see that those young people that have various froms of expressing themselves and spending their time in a meaningful way are getting better through periodes of lock down then others. This project strives to give more young people more opportunities to express themselves and discover talents and interests.The youth work partners will choose from different forms of art/self-expression that are relevant and interesting for young people - circus, music, gaming and painting are on top of that list. With the support of experts from those fields they will engage young people (10 - 18 years) in experimenting with those art forms for expressing their ideas, needs and wishes around the overall common theme/topic ""Planet Earth"".The method used is “learning by doing” and developing new methods through finding out what works and what doesn´t for the young people. The activites are not just there for the fun of it, but should support classic youth work goals such as: - higher self esteem - youth participation - discovering hidden talents - inclusion and taking responsibly for our society The monitoring of the project will give an answer to the question; what works and why - what fails and why. This knowledge will be disseminated through:- a research report- a manual for youth work organisations who wish to implement some of those new methods- video tutorials on the methods that worked best for direct use of other youth workers.. The project will close down with a youth mobility where all four groups can show case what they did and exchange with peers (young people and youth workers alike) from other countries their experiences. After this closing event we will distribute the gained knowledege and products in multiplier events in all four participating countries and disseminate all our materials on local, national and Europen level e.g. by publishing a dedicated issue of our LOGBOOK E-Magazine for professional open youth workers on the topic."

Unfortunately the project had to stop prematurely on September 30 2019. Due to an internal conflict at Stichting JONG Rotterdam, Marc Boes was not able any more to participate in the Project as the representative of Stichting JONG. The other representative became ill for a long period of time and had to withdraw.Several attempts to continue the project with different roles of responsibility by the other partners failed due to inter organizational obstacles.

"Main aim of the project ""European Wide Web of Youth Work"" is to foster the usage of on-line tools in non-formal education in order to improve quality of programs for education of youth leaders and youth workers available. The consortium participating in this project is consisted of national organizations from Slovenia, Lithuania, Italy, and networks from Serbia, Croatia, the Netherlands, as well as one international network based in Austria. All partners have rich experience in designing and implementing educational programs for youth leaders and youth workers on local, national and European level, as well as different experiences in using on-line learning tools. The idea for this project came after assessing common needs in improving quality and accessibility of training programs for youth workers, by introducing, adapting and creating new on-line learning tools. Several activities are planned in order to raise capacities of educators and trainers in NFE to effectively use on-line learning in their programs, but also to explore existing tools for on-line learning, adjust them to the needs of non-formal education and youth work and create new tools that will help NFE and youth work practitioners to work on competences of youth leaders and youth workers on-line.The project includes 2 mobility activities: training course for building competences of 24 educators in the youth field to use on-line learning in their training programs for youth workers and seminar that will gather 28 experts in NFE together with IT experts to explore possibilities of on-line learning in NFE and create new tools for it. In addition, participants of the training course will organize on-line courses for their target groups, on national or European level that will gather more than 100 participants in total. Manual for using on-line tools in non-formal education will be created and published in English and languages of participating countries (7 European languages).Careful plan for dissemination and exploitation of results of the project is designed in order to promote the possibilities of on-line learning to wide range of organizations and institutions working on designing and implementing educational programs for youth leaders and youth workers."