Partnership Building Activity “Outdoors and Digital Tools in Youthwork”

We invite everyone who would like to create strong partnerships and start to develop new Erasmus+ applications on the topic of the outdoors and digital tools. We are a group of youth workers, educators, trainers, and project managers from Austria, Georgia, Finland, Italy, The Republic of North Macedonia, Spain and Ukraine.

Preliminary program of the Partnership Building Activity

Saturday 29th of October 10:00-13:00 GMT +02:00 (same as Austrian/Italian, etc time zone)

10:00 ● Intro

10:30 ● Parallel sessions (Erasmus+, YE, TC, CB, Outdoor Education) 

11:15 ● Break

11:45 ● Foundation for quality partnerships - input on project team experience

12:00 ● Networking - review organisations on Padlet map (name, type of organisation, activities, contact details, etc)

12:30 ● Ideas/topics brainstorming on Jamboard

13:00 ● End

OPTIONAL 18:00-19:00 Informal meeting with possible partners at Gather.town 

OPTIONAL Monday 31st of October Helloween pre-party 18:00-20:00 GMT +02:00 (same as Austrian/Italian, etc time zone)

18:00-18:30 Dress up for the Halloween celebration

18:30-19:00 Surprise

Tuesday 1st of November 10:00-13:00 GMT +02:00 (same as Austrian/Italian, etc time zone)

10:00 ● Intro

10:15 ● Present the teams - self-made in the time between the meetings

10:35 ● Concept development - working on the common project writing template (aim, objectives target groups, impact STEPSIS)

12:00 ● Pitching ideas - presenting ideas and receiving feedback

12:45 ● Evaluation and hot to proceed further

13:00 ● End

About the project "Outdoors and Digital Tools in Youthwork":

There are numerous studies that have proven that being in the outdoors can decrease one’s stress level, accelerate healing from an injury or illness, increase one’s ability to focus, communicate and express freely—even in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. But not all youth workers and educators are aware of the benefits of these methods and/or have the capability and skill to use them in practice with their target groups. Even taking into account that digital tools became in some cases the “only” tool that you can use in order to organise activities, in order to follow national health regulations and measures. Not many organisations in the youth work field can afford to take the risk and replace good old methodology with digital tools (web pages, apps, etc).

Through our project, we would like to change this situation, by showing youth workers and educators a variety of ways how they can organise outdoors learning experiences while using digital tools. 

Our project aims to increase the quality of the outdoors learning experience provided by youth workers and educators to target groups that they work with.

The objectives of the project are:

• To exchange tools, experience and know-how related to outdoors learning 
• To develop competencies in identifying the needs of various target groups and adaptation of activities according to them
• To develop competencies in developing own outdoor learning activities combining them with digital tools
• Build a community that supports the quality of outdoors learning projects and activities for young people.

The project consists of a residential training course in Oivanki Youth Center, local follow-up activities in each partner community, online/virtual seminar with the Partnership Building Activity.

Our applicant organisation is Nuoriso-ja luontomatkailukeskus Oivanki (Finland) is one of the Finnish Youth Centres. It is a non-profit organisation and it is owned by the town of Kuusamo. It is run as an LTD company, with a separate budget for youth activities which are controlled by the Ministry of Education and  Culture. Yearly there is approx. 12000 contacts/overnight stays/contacts of young people in the centre. One of our key values and main topics is to serve and support the youth work and education sector. Oivanki works as a regional resource centre for youth work development, for example, organising seminars, training courses, thematic projects, and international cooperation among youth work and education. 

Our partner consortium consists of the following partners:

• Austria (Arbeitskreis Noah)
• Georgia (SIQA - Georgian Association of Educational Initiatives)
• Italy (Wild Routes)
• Morocco (Mediterranean Forum For Social Development)
• The Republic of North Macedonia (Sfera International)
• Spain (Madrid Outdoor Education)
• Ukraine (Vzayemopomich)