Toolbox — For Training and Youth Work
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Presentation, Manual, Info session
Break.Take.Make: The Design Thinking Toolkit by Papaya Association
A practical Design Thinking toolkit for educators, youth workers and youth leaders, offering methods and activities to help young people explore real needs, generate ideas, prototype solutions and turn challenges into meaningful action.
Aims of the tool
This toolkit aims to support educators, youth workers and youth leaders in using Design Thinking as a practical approach to social change and youth empowerment. It guides users through an experiential process of empathising, defining challenges, generating and selecting ideas, prototyping, testing, reflecting and adapting.
Through practical methods, questions, examples and digital tools, it aims to strengthen empathy and active listening, creativity and collaborative problem-solving, initiative and entrepreneurial thinking, and the capacity to experiment, learn from feedback and turn ideas into meaningful action.
Rather than providing ready-made answers, the toolkit encourages educators to create conditions in which young people can question assumptions, explore different perspectives, take ownership of challenges and develop solutions based on real needs.
Description of the tool
The BREAK.TAKE.MAKE. Toolkit is a practical learning resource that introduces Design Thinking as a process for turning real challenges into meaningful action.
It guides educators and young people through the different stages of the Design Thinking journey: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test and Reflect. Each stage combines key concepts with practical questions, methods, examples and digital tools that can be adapted to different educational and youth-work contexts.
The toolkit places particular emphasis on learning by doing and collective intelligence. Participants are encouraged to listen to different perspectives, question assumptions, generate ideas collaboratively, experiment with possible solutions and use feedback and failure as opportunities for learning and improvement.
Methods presented include empathy maps, personas, interviews and observation, “How Might We...?” questions, Crazy 8, Six Thinking Hats, perspective-taking, clustering and Dotmocracy, prototyping, testing and iterative learning.
Learning outcomes: Users of the toolkit can develop their capacity to identify and understand real needs, practise empathy and active listening, define challenges more effectively, generate and select ideas collaboratively, create and test prototypes, work constructively with feedback, and develop creativity, initiative, resilience and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Available downloads:
Disclaimer
SALTO cannot be held responsible for the inappropriate use of these training tools. Always adapt training tools to your aims, context, target group and to your own skills! These tools have been used in a variety of formats and situations. Please notify SALTO should you know about the origin of or copyright on this tool.
Tool overview
http://toolbox.salto-youth.net/5972
This tool is for
Educators, youth workers, youth leaders, trainers and facilitators working with young people, particularly those interested in Design Thinking, social entrepreneurship, non-formal education, youth participation and collaborative problem-solving. The toolkit can also be used directly with young people and youth groups who want to explore challenges in their communities, develop ideas and turn them into practical initiatives or solutions.
and addresses
Social Inclusion, Intercultural Learning, Organisational Management, European Citizenship, Youth Participation
It is recommended for use in:
Training and Networking
Strategic Partnerships
Materials needed:
The materials depend on the activities selected from the toolkit. Most can be implemented with simple facilitation materials such as:
Paper or flipchart sheets, sticky notes, pens/markers and materials for creating simple prototypes.
For some activities, access to a computer/smartphone and internet connection can be useful, as the toolkit also suggests digital tools for empathy, participation, ideation and prototyping.
Duration:
Flexible – from a single workshop to a longer learning process.
The toolkit is designed to be adapted rather than completed within a fixed timeframe. Educators can select individual methods for a short session or guide participants through the complete Design Thinking journey:
Empathise → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test → Reflect
The process is iterative: participants explore a real challenge, understand the people and needs involved, define the underlying problem, generate and select ideas, create a simple prototype, test it with others, gather feedback and adapt their solution. The cycle can then be repeated according to the needs of the group and project.
Behind the tool
The tool was created by
Asociación Socio-Cultural Papaya, together with the participants of BREAK.TAKE.MAKE.
in the context of
BREAK.TAKE.MAKE. – Erasmus+ Mobility Project for Youth Workers (KA153)
The tool has been experimented in
Erasmus+ Training Course for youth workers, educators and youth leaders
The tool was published to the Toolbox by
Papaya Association (on 15 October 2026)
and last modified
28 August 2026
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