TOGETHER to get there

Background According to the report of the study ‘Backgrounds, Experiences and Responses to Online Hate Speech: A Comparative Cross-Country Analysis’, the 31% of people aged 11-17 that have been interviewed admitted having seen hate online messages targeting people attacked for skin colour, nationality and religion. These findings are in line with the conclusion of the document “Being young in Europe today – digital world” by Eurostat, stating that surfing inthe web may expose children and young people to potentially harmful content, fostering dependency, anxiety or aggression”. In this context, youth workers needed to be better equipped in managing youth programmes for media literacy, prevention of hate speech and promotion of tolerance online and offline, to be able to better contribute to prevent and counter hate speech and misinformation among the young people they work with. At the same time, In a context of shrinking resources, our organisations needed to reinforce their relevance at European level, by developing their networking capacity, including the skills in co-planning and co-designing youth programmes. Objectives By implementing the project, the Partnership wanted to increase youth workers’ competences in dealing with fake news and hate speech prevention by increasing the opportunities of exchange of best practices and methodologies to design and implement activities, for an intergenerational and intercultural group of 30 senior, junior and young volunteering youth workers. Partners provided the opportunity for participants in the exchanges of increasing their resilience to hatred and fake news online and of nourishing their attitude to actively counter these phenomena and promote tolerance narratives. The Partnership also aimed at strengthening also the 6 partner organisations’ capacity align their youth work practices and methods, creating an enabling environment for a stronger and more stable cooperation among them and to participate in networks to optimise the available resources, develop joint investments, increase the capacity to capitalise on existing best practices, by sharing new methodologies to facilitate co-designing of projects. Implementation Beside the normal project management activity, Together. To get there. organised 3 transnational exchanges of good practices in September 2021 in Verona (Italy), in April 2022 in Jerez de la Frontera (Spain) and December 2022 in Sofia (Bulgaria).The organisations selected 22 participants for each exchange among senior and junior youth workers and young volunteers from 6 countries: Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland, Austria and the UK. During the exchanges, youth workers shared their organisations good practices, participated in specific training sessions and, through participative methodologies, developed a draft of a new activity to be later tested locally. Local stakeholders were invited to meet the participants and share some inputs with them. In the exchange that took place in Verona, the participants also met representatives of NMCNS and UNAR,respectively a local and a National network working to fight and prevent discriminations, through education, advocacy and campaigning activities. After each of the first two exchanges, youth workers organised workshops to test the draft version of the youth work activity developed during the exchange. These experimentations took place at local level, reaching a total of 186 young people. Achievements OUTPUTS: -2 toolkits + 1 adaptation on hate speech and fake news; -3 short videos on the experiences shared; -guidelines for possible joint interventions by partners, in line with Erasmus+ RESULTS: -IMPROVED SKILLS OF 30 YOUTH WORKERS who: are now better equipped with competences and tools and able to create more inclusive and welcoming environments; have increased their ability to make use of information technology for supporting learning processes; are trained in intercultural team working. In C2,they focused on competences to design activities and foster inclusive participation with group dialogue processes. In C3,YWs developed their competence to deal with conflict situations and reflected on understanding and developing their professional role as YWs. They also improved their skills in self-evaluation, building partnerships, creating effective alliances and networks and, including young people in partnerships. -IMPROVED KNOWLEDGE OF 186 YOUNG PEOPLE thanks to the testing activities between the exchanges. -A MORE STRUCTURED COOPERATION BETWEEN OUR ORGANISATIONS. Organizations now share a plan of action to support youth workers’ professional development and align their skill in targeting youths’ needs in a fast-changing context.