"<< Background >>The COVID-19 pandemic and the confinement measures implemented in many EU countries have caused major upheavals in people's lives from multiple points of view. Indeed, the way in which people can relate to each other and carry out the most basic every-days tasks has been limited, significantly altering the regular implementation of education, training and youth policies. According to some studies (""Youth and COVID-19 Response, Recovery and Resilience"" - OECD, ""Living, Working and COVID-19"" - Eurofund, ""The European Youth Blueprint To Recovery"" - European Youth Forum) focused on the effects of current pandemic in relation to the employment situation and the mental health of young people, these are strongly affected with higher levels of depression, loneliness, tension, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.ACTMEM is based - within this context - on the importance of memory as a way to enhance resilience among young people. Memory, understood both as historical memory and as ""memory of the present"", nourishes the social fabric, enlivening the relationships between different generations, helping the crisis to be elaborated, also thanks to comparisons with the past.The project ACTMEM aims at creating an innovative learning experience addressed to young people and based on storytelling techniques, as a means to combat the sense of isolation related to the restrictive measures adopted by National Governments in response to the health crisis, while increasing key competences such as sense of initiative, social and civic participation and intercultural awareness and expression. The project idea stems from the will to promote a radical change of perspective towards the perception of being young in times of pandemic: from victims of unhappy circumstances limiting their freedom to move, meet, learn and discover, to protagonists of an absolutely exceptional historical era, who showed a great capacity to react and reinvent themselves and whose stories deserve to be recorded and told as sources of inspiration for the present and future generations.ACTMEM is focused on an emerging need stemming from the isolation and dramatic reduction of sociality of youth. Youth organisations recognise the need to involve with new methodologies youth in activities and experiences able to radically change the perception and the perspective of being young in time of pandemic through the implementation of narrative methodologies aiming at helping the expression, sharing and comparison among youth experiences of this historical period and emergency in a cross-border approach. Youth need to reflect on the current difficulties and understand their role as protagonists of an absolutely exceptional historical era, who showed a great capacity to react and reinvent themselves and whose stories deserve to be recorded and told as sources of inspiration for the present and future generations.ACTMEM wants to give new awareness to all youths as promoters of the communities. TARGET GROUPS of the project are:•YOUTH experiencing isolation during the pandemic but also active in solidarity actions within their own communities.•YOUTH with fewer possibilities and economical, social obstacles including youth with disabilities experienced the most difficult isolation: to listen to them and find solutions for tackling such disparities is one of the most compelling needs of youth organisations and society as a whole. •YOUTH Leaders in need to acquire new skills and methodologies for improving the involvement of youth in collective and individual solidarity actions.•YOUTH ORGANISATIONS are in permanent need to engage youths in active citizenship by promoting solidarity and a common sense of citizenship.<< Objectives >>Youth need to reflect on the current difficulties and understand their role as protagonists of an absolutely exceptional historical era, who showed a great capacity to react and reinvent themselves and whose stories deserve to be recorded and told as sources of inspiration for the present and future generations. Telling and sharing the ""memory of the present"", with reference to the new generations, means in particular:· the possibility, for young people, to narrate and share experiences related to the pandemic, as a contrast to isolation; both as communication to each other and intergenerational communication. We know how social distancing, the closure of schools, youth centers and social places generated deep discomfort in young Europeans of all ages, in a phase of life where the relationships with peers and with reference adults, even outside the family, are key.· At the same time, ""memory of the present"" means telling and sharing the experiences of resilience and solidarity that were achieved by civil society as a response to the crisis, and which saw the strong presence of young people. We are talking about different experiences of solidarity from the bottom: from the distribution of food and medicine to the most vulnerable people, to remote listening and support activities to combat the loneliness of the elderly, to the most various cultural initiatives.The project partners aim to actively involve young people in the process of collection and reconstruction of their individual stories and inspiring experiences related to the way they went through the pandemic and the different strategies they developed to tackle the new challenges brought by the virus.In particular, the specific objectives of the project ACTMEM are:• To transform the experience of the pandemic into an opportunity for the development of self-confidence and key competences among young people, such as intercultural awareness and expression, sense of initiative, social and civic participation• To promote inclusive, creative and innovative approaches to storytelling among young people, so as to combat social isolation and reinforce their resilience in response to the current health crisis• To foster the participation of young people in civil society by spreading good practices related to solidarity actions in times of pandemic • To promote the EU values among young people and in particular active citizenship and the pillar of being united in diversityThe project will achieve the above mentioned objectives by creating a blended training path based on storytelling methodologies. This result will lead to the realisation of a Manual addressed to youth leaders for supporting the involvement of youth by providing methodologies and practical guidance. Furthermore ACTMEM will realise an Open Narration virtual space for collecting individual and collective stories representing a priceless digital archive of the memory of life in times of pandemic from the perspective of young people.The expertise and complementarity of the partners inspired the overall design of the project by focusing on narration of individual and collective stories about pandemic and related solidarity’s action born under these difficult times, which, in no other example more than this, may boost the achievement of the general goals by:•Providing youth and youth leader with the possibility to engage with peers coming from different countries;•Providing the possibility to carry out a transnational experience through blended mobility will grant the target groups with an enriched and qualifying experience in different cultural environments.•Giving them the chance to know and to understand different experiences improving in this way both the knowledge about different countries and the sense of European citizenship.<< Implementation >>ACTMEM work plan is structured in such a way to show consecutive and intersecting activities that can be simplified in different phases. Phase 1 Setting up the ACTMEM instruments: the ACTMEM managers and working teams will set up the tool for a smooth and timely implementation of all the activities: management plan and tools, dissemination plan, quality assessment plan and tools will be prepared and placed in force. These activities will be carried out for the whole duration of the project. The internal reporting of project activities and outcomes will be performed on a six-monthly basis. The work on R1 - ACTMEM blended learning workshop will start with the establishment of the didactic team/ editorial team taking care about the analysis and methodology definition including contents for the transnational training event. This phase will see also the production of learning contents for the training event and tutorials (interviews, video, presentations). On the digital side of the project, in this phase also R2 - ACTMEM Digital space for narration will start with an initial definition and drafting features of the web platform, set up of the digital structure for the web platform including Blog and Vlog. In addition, it will start the realization of a set of guided storyboard tools for different thematic areas. The selection of participants for the transnational training event will start.Phase 2 Implementation of core activities: R1 activities such as the production learning contents and tutorials will be still ongoing but the first outcomes for organizing the transnational training event will be ready to be provided: trainers and trainees will meet to set up a common methodology of provision of learning content and a shared approach to the organization of the successive local workshops. Further tutorials, training contents and storytelling will be realized by the Youth Leaders attending as learners and at the end the learning outcomes and achievement will be assessed and validated.The realization of Manual for youth leaders, still under preparation, will benefit also from this first feedback. Concerning R2, the definition and realization guided storyboard tools and related virtual tools will be fine-tuned, while the definition and implementation of a co-narration virtual space for storytelling (Open Narrating Virtual Space) is under preparation for a first deployment during the Local Workshops activities. The Local Workshops will be organised by youth leaders for transferring knowledge about storytelling toward peers undertaking a pair working approach simplifying the realization of video narrations and storytelling with at least 50 youth per country. At this stage, the Open Narrating Virtual Space will be used: youth leaders and mentors will support youth in approaching this new tool, which will enable the remote collaboration among 40 people in building a collective story also with the support of tutors and facilitators operating on line. Phase 3 Validation, finalization and final dissemination : the Local Workshops and their final validation of the learning outcomes towards target groups will be finalised. The realization of the Manual for Youth Leaders will include feedback of young trainees whose contributions will be included in the verification and finalization of the digital tools as well. The dissemination activities will see their final phase with the organization in each partner country of the Multiplier Event. Along the three phases of the project, the partners will carry out an intensive communication and dissemination activity by involving also associated partners and relevant stakeholders in order to get an high outreach and to build the the basis of a sustainability plan for the future. A quality assessment activity will accompany and support the achievement of results.<< Results >>ACTMEM will realise two main Results:R1 – ACTMEM Blended Learning Workshop - Innovative methodologies for the narration of memoryThis result consists in the realization of a blended training path based on storytelling methodologies. The training contents will be realised by the partners and tested through the involvement of youth leaders during the project implementation (namely transnational training activity). In order to ensure correspondence to the needs of the target groups and facilitate their further enhancement, youth leaders will replicate the learning path by organising local workshops with peers. The whole process including feedback on training contents and learning path and validation of learning contents, will lead to the realisation of a Manual addressed to youth leaders for supporting the replication of the workshops by providing methodologies and practical guidance. Local workshops will be organised in each country’s involving youth groups: all the partners will experiment the educational activities and contents with different groups of young people. In particular: each partner will set up 5 storytelling workshops with the involvement of a very high number of young people: 50 per country and 200 in total. As an additional output the whole process will lead to the Manual including guidelines for Youth Leaders on adapting methodologies in different contexts and different groups of young people.ACTMEM Workshops is an innovative result, and will contribute to: -increase of skills in youth leaders/mentors and organisations regarding educational work with young people through narration methodologies, focused on developing resilience in young people in the pandemic crisis and leads to a greater ability to address the needs of the young people they work with.-increase of skills related to storytelling methodologies, enhancement of resilience skills and capacity to reflect and take action to face the pandemic crisis effectsR2 - ACTMEM web platform This result consists of an interactive virtual space targeted to young people where individual stories will be shared and by the end of the project around 240 stories will be available. The web platform constitutes a tool to facilitate the collection and constructive reflection on the experiences developed and lessons learnt during the times of pandemic, representing as well a networking tool aimed to facilitate interaction among young people at European level, thanks to the implementation of the feature “Open Narrating Virtual Space” allowing the collaboration of 10 to 40 people for the realization of a collective narrations across Europe. The platform will include tutorials, training contents and storyboards aiming at supporting the realisation of individual and collective narrations. The feature Open Narrating Virtual Space enables young people to co-creative sessions with peers, giving the possibility to open dialogue with different cultural approaches to pandemic and to increase the social aspect. ACTMEM Platform will contribute in creating the following benefit: -for young people the platform will facilitate the practice of some of the educational activities created by the R1, thus facilitating participation. -ACTMEM will not be yet another platform but, creating a historical memories archive, it will allow different study domains to access civil society and youth memories in order to analyze and acquire a more comprehensive knowledge about the social and moral effect of pandemic. Even when the pandemic is defeated, the experiences of resilience born in this period of emergency, the awareness and lessons learned from these experiences, can remain as a memory of this historic challenge that Europe is going through.ACTMEM results are highly transferable since the narration techniques and tutorials may be transferred to a plenty of different domains such as: social and demographic investigation, psychology research, and so on."