Overview
The ACTION project is based on a belief that trying to engage hard-to-reach young people in education programmes designed to be delivered in the classroom, is a losing battle. Instead, we need to promote how education can be provided to young people through non-formal and non-traditional methods. As such, ACTION will support youth workers to work in non-traditional environments, such as integrating online resources and social media channels into their work with young people. ACTION also promotes a non-formal education environment, where production teams are formed within a youth group to produce a series of short films on issues that are relevant and important to the young people themselves.
ACTION aims to engage these hard-to-reach young people in meaningful education activities. This means that the activities they complete as part of a production team will build on the digital and social media skills and know-how that they already possess, and it will support them to apply these skills to a creative project, where they will be given the freedom and support to share their own story. At the heart of ACTION is an aim to empower young people from across Europe to share their opinions, their values and their concerns about the world around them; and to use the medium of filmmaking to give voice to these opinions. While working in their production teams to develop these creative projects, young people will also be developing key skills and competences in the areas of literacy, numeracy, digital media, creative thinking, collaboration, teamwork, civic awareness, intercultural tolerance, etc.
It is envisaged that by the end of the ACTION project, production teams across 6 European countries will produce 40 short films which will be fully developed, produced and edited by young people who have previously had negative experiences of education.
Aims & Objectives
ACTION aims to provide youth professionals with practical training and access to resources so that they can plan and deliver creative projects with hard-to-reach young people in their community. By building the skills of these youth professionals to use digital media production techniques in their youth practice, ACTION aims to re-ignite an interest among hard-to-reach young people in their education pathways, by unlocking hidden creative talents which until now have not been fully appreciated.
ACTION specific objectives are to:
- Provide youth professionals with educational tools to allow them to produce short films
- Provide young people with the opportunities to develop their soft skills, which can be reused in any situation
- Help youth professionals to understand how to engage young people
- Unleash the creative talent of young people on topics relevant to them
- Empower young people to be able to present, in an innovative way. issues and problems that concern them
- Enhance the professional profile of youth professionals and youth organisations
- Re-engage young people in education and civic life
Outputs
Curriculum for Youth Educators (IO1- In-Service Training for Front-line Youth Workers- Learner Manual & Resources)
Wanna train young people to create short films? Check this out!
How to guide young people to use digital media and create films
Practical training programme to build the skills and confidence of youth workers to use digital media and create films with young people.
Curriculum for Youth (IO2- Inquiry-Based and Embedded-learning KeyTransversal Skills Acquisition Resources)
Wanna create a short movie? We will show you the way!
Practical activities that will help you to create a short movie using your smartphone and other available technology.
Output 3: E-learning portal
The window of the project
Your direct access to all the material produced and a platform to showcase young peoples’ talent
Output 4: Policy paper
Want to know what we have learnt and what we suggest?
Everything you wanted to know about policies but were afraid to ask
Methodology
The approach of the ACTION project will be to first engage youth professionals and young people in local advisory groups. The role of these groups will be to inform the development of key educational materials, by this we mean that these youth workers and young people will share their training needs and their preferences for how we present training materials online, and then we will use these as guidelines to develop educational materials that we know are relevant and of interest to the individuals we are seeking to engage.
ACTION will then develop a training programme specifically for youth workers that will aim to develop their core digital media skills, but also enhance their ability to teach in non-traditional environments, such as working online, integrating social media safely into their youth work, and developing creative projects with young people through informal production teams.
Following this, ACTION will then support the local work of these newly-trained youth professionals, by creating a series of activities, digital tools, lesson plans, etc. that will aim to develop the literacy, numeracy, communication, teamwork, digital skills and civic, social and intercultural competence of young people engaged in the production teams. These tools will suggest group and individual activities which youth workers can use with young people in their production teams, to build these key skills without ever feeling like they are being educated.
At the end of the project, ACTION partner organisations will recognise the creative work completed by the youth professionals and the young people, with a showcase event. Short film festivals will be held in all 6 European countries to celebrate the talent that has been unlocked as part of the ACTION project.
