The Digital World – A Space for Inclusion and Participation took place on Thursday 2 December 2021. As befits the theme, a group of fellow youth workers and NGOs working in the field of advocacy came together online, on Zoom, to explore together what elements contribute to an inclusive online experience that encourages and enables participation.
The consultation took place in the context of the Creative Digital Spaces project, which aims to strengthen the quality and impact of our online youth work, which has become a reality in times of pandemic, and brings the potential to complement our regular face-to-face activities even when the pandemic will be but a faint memory.
Speakers’ contributions
The panel opened with contributions from the speakers, followed by a reflection on our own experiences during the new coronavirus epidemic. The first speaker was Simon Delakorda, who shared his views on the opportunities and challenges related to the digital inclusion of young people, enabling digital participation and the pitfalls of using technology.
This was followed by presentations by Anja Fortuna and Sara Marija Širnik, who presented the first results of Slovenia’s Presidency of the EU Council, whose key priority in the field of youth was precisely “space and participation for all”. During the week of our consultation, the EU Council of Ministers adopted key documents:
- Council Conclusions on Safeguarding and Creating Civic Spaces for Young People, Enabling Meaningful Participation of Young People;
- Council Conclusions on the Implementation of the EU Youth Strategy (2019-2021);
- EU Council Resolution on the Results of the Eighth Cycle of the EU Youth Dialogue;
- Council Resolution on the Work Plan for the EU Youth Strategy 2022-2024.
At the Youth Conference, young people and decision-makers identified four key recommendations in the area of virtual spaces for young people, including:
- Setting minimum digital standards for infrastructure, including free wireless/internet access and basic digital tools used by young people;
- Establishing a framework at the European level to monitor the suitability of virtual spaces for young people (clear and up-to-date guidelines on the use of plain language and centralisation of relevant information);
- allocation of resources to strengthen digital competencies, in particular for young people with fewer opportunities, and
- Strengthening the competencies of educators to ensure that young people have the necessary competencies and tools to protect themselves against misinformation and hate speech in virtual spaces by promoting young people’s ability to form objective judgements.
This was followed by practical experience in the field. Maja Drobne shared good practices in promoting and involving young people in decision-making processes in the digital context. Within KUD Pina, an online consultation with young people on the municipal spatial plan was carried out, allowing students staying in Ljubljana during the week to participate. Among other things, a series of Digijavno workshops was organised to empower public institutions and decision-makers to involve young people in consultation processes online. Experience has shown that online youth activities are more suitable as supplementary activities, but they also allow young people who do not want to expose themselves to participate so that they can participate with the camera off and without a microphone, with the occasional recording in a chat window.
Mistral Majer from IMPRO shared the main challenges of online working with a sustainable group. These ranged from technical difficulties to challenges with the lack of private spaces in the homes of the young people involved in our activities, motivation, making first contacts and connections, doubts about being heard, camera stress, and the emergence of an obsession with one’s own image. However, practitioners face the problem of perceiving and addressing emotional states, as young people can (technically) exclude themselves, and we can no longer reach them.
Check out the contributions of our speakers here (they are in Slovene).
Consultation with participants
The questions we raised with the participants were :
- What are the positive and negative aspects of working with young people in digital contexts? What have we learnt about this so far?
- What are our ambitions (personal or organisational) in the field of working with young people in digital contexts?
- What would we need for youth work to be more participatory, inclusive, creative and initiative-oriented – but we don’t have it (e.g. equipment, competencies, programme licences, practitioners’ attitudes)?
We are continuing the consultation. We invite you to write down your answers and ideas in the Padlet. The practices and challenges will inspire us to design digital solutions as part of our strategic partnership.
If you are interested in learning more about the project, please contact [email protected]
Images by: DALL-E AI