STEP BY STEP, STORY BY STORY

Aims of the tool

This toolkit provides opportunities to reflect, imagine, express, and engage, supporting youth workers in helping young people maintaining the ability to envision the future and participate actively in shaping it, even amid uncertainty. Its activities foster critical thinking, creativity, empathy, and collaboration, while highlighting young people’s strengths and collective power.

Description of the tool

Being young today is exciting but can also feel overwhelming.
Climate change, conflicts, social inequalities, migration challenges, and rapid technological change shape how young people imagine their future. Many communities
also face tensions around democracy, participation, and social cohesion. Confronted with such complexity, young people often feel anxious, doubt their ability to influence the world, or withdraw from community engagement and discussions about the future.

At the same time, young people are full of ideas, creativity, and a desire to contribute.
When given space to speak, reflect, and create ogether, they show strong motivation to improve their communities, ask important questions, and imagine possibilities adults may not see. Youth workers play a key role in this process by fostering reflection, participation, and agency, helping young people reconnect with their capacity to imagine and shape the
future.

The Our Future project, developed within the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in the Field of Youth programme, created this toolkit to support youth workers. It combines Global Education, which helps young people understand links between local and global issues and develop shared responsibility, with Participatory Video, which empowers them to use storytelling and cameras to express perspectives, share experiences, and explore the future. This collaborative approach transforms participants from passive observers into active storytellers.

Together, these approaches provide opportunities to reflect, imagine, express, and engage. The toolkit supports youth workers in helping young people maintain the ability to envision the future and participate actively in shaping it, even amid uncertainty. Its activities foster critical thinking, creativity, empathy, and collaboration, while highlighting young people’s strengths and collective power.

The toolkit include 3 Global Learnig Unit ( Thinking the future, Feeling the future, Acting the future); Participatory Video Labs Guidelineswith Reels and Videos produced by young people.

Each part of the toolkit includes practical activities, facilitation tips, and adaptable ideas tested by partners in Italy, Morocco, and Tunisia. No prior filmmaking or global issues expertise is required—what matters is the willingness to listen, explore questions together, and create space for young people’s voices. Ultimately, it invites youth workers and young people to explore the world, imagine futures, and take meaningful steps
toward communities they wish to build—step by step, story by story.