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From left to right: Jaana Fedotoff, Miriam Teuma, Edgar Schlümmer and Andriy Kolobov
Digital youth education

Is it possible to gain international experience at home?

We asked our international partners

In the Corona crisis, many international partners have gained experience with digital formats. Their assessments range from pragmatic to prophetic. However, they all agree on one point: digitisation will also change (international) youth work and COVID19 has proven to be a catalyst for this. IJAB asked Jaana Fedotoff (Finland), Miriam Teuma (Malta), Edgar Schlümmer (Estonia) and Andriy Kolobov (Ukraine).

11.02.2021 / Christian Herrmann

Mobility is a right of young people

Jaana Fedotoff is President of the European Youth Information Network ERYICA and Development Manager of Koordinaatti, Finland

The Coronavirus pandemic has definitely transferred international activities to the digital sphere. While we believe that international cooperation and youth exchanges will continue in the midst of change, it is clear that we need to adjust how we have acted and operated so far. The unpredictability of the situation has created challenges, and some exchanges have had to be cancelled. To some extent, the crisis may also have affected the employment situation of youth workers. Although the pandemic has certainly affected us all, we have been particularly concerned about those young people who do not have equal opportunities or who do not have digital resources. So my question is, can international experience be gained in the same way in one’s home country?

Responsibility has always been a key factor in exchanges, and in the current situation its significance has even increased. Project managers have had to react quickly to find innovative ways to implement exchanges and actions in digital spaces. Today, international mobility is perceived as important, even more so than in the past. But this repositioning also involves more effort. Youth workers have been required to reach more and more young people online and through social media, yet we have also heard criticism as to why resources should be invested in virtual, digital mobility.

I appreciate the fact that experiencing different places and cultures, peer learning and international exchanges is still considered important. A survey among youth workers in the spring directed the spotlight at exchanges. The exchange of ideas in international environments, even in digital formats, is still considered important. New types of partnerships have also been launched as well as new formats. The pandemic has brought important topics such as the ecology of international exchanges to the forefront.

I believe that we will emerge from this era with a new way of thinking. Internationality doesn’t always mean travelling from one country to another. Instead, the world opens up right where you are. This is also an economic issue. Although funding is still available for mobility projects, we need to think about whether there will be enough funding in the future. Will it be sufficient to give all young people the opportunity to participate in an international mobility project or exchange? That said, we must consider whether something is missing from the experience when it does not happen face to face. For some international exchanges, virtual formats are more suitable than others.

Recommendation No. 5 of the “Engage, Inform, Empower” paper by ERYICA, Eurodesk and EYCA –  to make mobility accessible to all young people – sends a strong message. The paper emphasises that mobility is a right for young people and that it should be made accessible to all young Europeans. In Finland, many young people live in remote regions. Then again, some regions are home to fewer young people than elsewhere in our country. I feel that it is important to enable mobility especially for them. Plus, digital implementation will likely lower the barrier for them to join these projects. The capacity of youth workers to carry out international youth exchanges must be supported at both national and European level.

I promote youth information and counselling work for young people both in Finland and more broadly in Europe, so I consider it particularly important that digital opportunities for international youth exchanges are flexible and adaptable to the current situation. It is vital to gather information, experiences and results concerning the long-term impacts right now.

Together with the National Board of Education, my organisation Koordinaatti is co-hosting a national webinar in Finland on 9 December on how the pandemic has affected our work in terms of youth information and counselling ,and how youth exchanges have changed since last spring. This topic is highly relevant to all of us across Europe.

New ways to get in touch with each other

Miriam Teuma is the Chief Executive Officer of Aġenzija Żgħażagħ, Malta's National Youth Agency.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt across the world. For everyone, including young people, it has resulted in a more restrictive lifestyle, limited access to education, work and services, and self-isolation and social distancing.

While regular youth services, programmes and initiatives in Malta and across Europe have been adversely impacted by the lockdown, it has also provided us with a unique opportunity to work with and reach out to young people online and through social media. At Aġenzija Żgħażagħ, we have continued to provide support and encouragement to young people during the pandemic while further developing and expanding our capacity for digital youth work. We have also continued to digitalise our services and supported youth organisations in re-designing and adapting their programmes and projects.

Despite social distancing and isolation, social media has opened up new ways for young people and youth workers to engage. Numerous online sessions have taken place where young people could discuss topical issues, engage in online activities and socialise with their peers, facilitated by professional youth workers. Many of these sessions have enabled young people from different social backgrounds to establish new relationships and share and discuss their values, ideas, aspirations and concerns.

We have also launched a number of specific initiatives during the pandemic in support of young people.

Our experiences during the pandemic have taught us two things in particular. First, while virtual or online formats can never replace the physical, face-to-face dimension of youth work, neither should they be seen as a mere adjunct or supplement, but rather as complementary, co-equal formats. Second, digital youth work is simply youth work by other means. While it clearly has its own challenges and opportunities, it does not alter the nature of youth work itself, which is the empowerment of young people through personal, social and political education.

Digital youth work has come of age during the pandemic. We must not miss this opportunity to embed it in future policy and practice.

A natural part of international cooperation

Edgar Schlümmer is an international expert on youth policy and youth work and visiting lecturer for youth work at Tallinn University and University of Tartu Narva College.

Estonia is a digitally advanced country and a trailblazer for smart technologies, so it was better prepared for remote work and participation. And yet for decades we have experienced a lack of resources for development in the youth field. In this sense, COVID and lockdown have been a kind of gift – the youth field quickly adopted digital formats across the country and for all types of activities, including national and local services. Youth information and work with young people at risk have enjoyed great recognition. Youth workers have been using Roblox and Discord, videoconferencing, digital hiking, vlogs, and other technologies to involve the diaspora abroad. Youth workers worked with the EdTech community to ensure solutions such as 99math.com, Lingvist.com, Clanbeat.com, Speakly.me and ALPA Kids would be available free of charge during the crisis for youth and education organisations to use.

The Estonian Youth Work Centre teamed up with Estonian start-up Veriff to launch a fully functional web-based system offering virtual personal identification so youth workers could apply to take occupational exams less than ten days after lockdown. At the national level, we have created several new digital manuals for tools as well as digital databases of available methods.

Of course we have also observed a lack of knowledge in some spheres, lack of technology, a digital divide among young people, and the lack of integrity of virtual meetings. However, this change has come to stay, and remote work does offer a number of benefits. Online formats can support youth work, so it is crucial to not see these options as short-term ad-hoc solutions for the current pandemic, but rather take a long-term view and develop digital forms of youth work with the idea in mind that online and offline formats complement each other. That said, face-to-face exchanges and cooperation are incredibly important especially in international settings. While digital or virtual spaces will remain a natural part of international cooperation, they should not be an objective per se, nor the only solution.

Participation in online events must also be possible for "normal" people

Andriy Kolobov is coordinator of Eurodesk Ukraine

Ukrainian youth institutions have been mainly focused on activities and exchanges for young people in an attempt to mainstream different programmes and projects. Since Euromaidan in Ukraine, Facebook has been the most popular space for political debate, similar to a conflict zone for civic participation. Many people also started to use YouTube for tough debates on specific topics. That experience was interesting and very hands-on. However, these tools were not interoperable and tended to trigger very limited audience participation.

Eurodesk in Ukraine was launched in 2018. We had a few years’ time to integrate youth workers from youth centres and youth-led NGOs and sign them up to an information exchange system that is integrated with our Erasmus+ partners from all over Europe. Organisations are all trying to find their own ways to work with their target audiences, to organise Zoom webinars, online plenary sessions and large conferences with new or updated online tools. At Eurodesk we try to disseminate information all over Ukraine and support youth policy as a priority field to interact proactively with society, especially during the pandemic. Many new projects and partnerships are being created, with organisations planning future project in online spaces yet also hoping to return to face-to-face communication. Internationally, online formats provide more opportunities for integration, so we need to make it easier for regular people to participate in online events. We are proud that activists have found very engaging formats for team-building activities and other seminars via online tools, which could be very interesting to explore thanks to technical developments such as private rooms, negotiations, etc. 

I do believe that all that new formats and approaches need some improvement, but at the same time we are able to benefit from all this research and creativity and integrate the new formats such as online components, toolkits, tests, and various interactive formats with traditional non-formal educational programmes. Also, we should consider using more online resources when preparing international events, also to create a stronger impact when implementing follow-up activities. Online resources increase our capacity to analyse data and be even more dependable partners for young people and their needs.

The texts have been taken from the recently published issue 2/2020 of IJAB journal.

Mehrere junge Menschen sitzen an einem Tisch und arbeiten an Laptops.
About digital youth education

The internet has become a cultural and communication space in its own right. Digital youth education helps young people to navigate this space responsibly and to use it for social and political participation.