SUMMARY/OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

The mainstream narratives are still focusing too often on the ways that people become dis-empowered and vulnerable rather than the many ways in which people actively resist and create, that is their resilience and transformational potential. This focus on ‘negative’ stories is reinforced through the rise and dominance of disinformation and fake news, often through social media, which contributes to increased xenophobic, racist and inflammatory speech in Europe. Those challenges after being exponentially magnified in the form of an “infodemic” that spread in parallel with COVID-19 pandemic, are now a major challenge for post-pandemic era.

Gathering the inputs from our 2021 project “Reperage” we aim to further enable youth workers as positive agents of change, emerging from the fields of social economy and social innovation, to disseminate better their activities and insights in order to forge new ways of perceiving and managing key social, economic and environmental issues.

Affecting popular perception is a major challenge that can only be tackled with the emergence of a diverse stream of positive, though real, stories throughout Europe, by the social actors that actually work to tackle those challenges, across mediums such as articles, videos, photo stories and podcasts.

“Decoupage” aims to train 22 youth workers from Italy(3), Spain(3), Lithuania(3), Portugal(3), Turkey(3), and Greece(7) for 8 days on storytelling practices using cost-efficient methods to improve the communication of their activities, thus maximizing their impact.

The projects’ main objective is to improve the key competences and skills of youth workers, especially those working on communication for the social sector, while at the same time contribute to the visibility deficit of youth work and its impact, by sharing tools and best practices on promoting educational activities, especially during times of social distancing.

The activities planned aim to develop competences of youth workers responsible for communication at partner organizations and their extended networks.