Review on “Digi-Youth-Alization” Training Course

Erasmus+ Training Course
17-25.11.2019 I Bitola, Macedonia

EKE Bitola was the organizer of a training course “Digi-YOUTH-alization: Build digital competencies using social and digital media tools in 21st century youth work” which was designed to build digital competences and encourage implementing innovative practices in digital youth work. With this project we aimed to build digital competences and encourage implementation of innovative practices in the digital youth work, disseminate the knowledge to volunteers and young people with fewer opportunities. Worth to metion that during the training course we have also covered the Web Content Accessibility and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) as an effort to improve the accessibility of the websites for people with disabilities.

In the training were participating 25 participants from 7 countries: Turkey, France, Croatia, Romania, Spain, Italy and Bulgaria. By participating in this training, participants gained digital competences needed for employment, personal development and social inclusion and enhance their skills for using different platforms. They learnt how to provide free digital tools and resources for digital youth work and non-formal education for non-profit organizations and young people with fewer opportunities. Also they could use the learnt skills and have an impact on improving their visibility and representation, as organization locally, nationally and internationally.

The tools and resources we worked with were an open source and available for free. The participants at the end of the project will be able to use digital tools in their work, to establish effective digital communication among their organizational team and target groups and become more visible on the national, regional and international level.

After this training the participants gained skills and knowledge for using digital tools to build the competencies needed in the digital era. The participants understood the trend of ICT and how they can improve the performance in their work, saving time for technical activities and much more time for developing ideas and creative solutions for challenges in the work place or in the community in general. The gained knowledge in using social media tools can be applied directly to the work of participant’s organization while reaching target groups, partners, stakeholders or more efficiently disseminating the results from the projects.