 and welcome to the webinar on quality of youth exchanges. We call this webinar from idea to project application. Yeah, so we're gonna look at what are the steps, what happens from the very beginning when idea pops up until the moment when actually you have a project and you have a project grant. And this webinar is part of the massive open online course on Erasmus plus funding opportunities for youth. So this MOOC is happening already, it's a sixth edition. We are organizing this online course since 2015, with more than probably 4,000 learners who already completed the course. This is special year this year because the course is ongoing. It started in February and it goes on until the end of the year. So actually if you're watching this webinar and you think, oh, I never heard about this course, no problem, you can easily enroll to the course and get access to all the materials we have. And at the end of this webinar, I will look through some materials, especially focusing on youth exchanges. But you can find a lot of material there on youth worker mobility, on strategic partnerships, on structure dialogue, on cooperation between program countries and partner countries and what these two words mean also. So there will be a lot of resources and my colleague, Narius, who is helping more technical part will also post in the chat the enrollment link. Those watching on Facebook, you will see enrollment link to the course in the comments below. So you can really catch up with the content and you are never late for our course and you're always selected to our course because course is unlimited for any amount of learners. And this particular sixth edition is financed and coordinated by the German National Agency, you can put Europa. So thanks to our supporters and we go on. And today in the webinar, we have two guest speakers and by now more than 30 participants. So the flow today will be this, that at first we'll start from Emil Vingren, who is a youth worker, a worker of young people and actually does what the name of the webinar tells. Supports young people in implementing their own ideas, yeah, their own ideas and kind of guiding them in implementation of youth exchanges and youth exchanges need money and support. And that is why the role of National Agencies is very important. And that's why we have Paavo, should I say Pukinen, yes, so Paavo is from the Finnish National Agency. He works with youth exchanges for already many years and he has a lot of knowledge about that and he will present the kind of approach of the National Agency and especially the importance of youth involvement in youth exchanges. Plus Paavo gonna share some exciting resources, how you can learn more about youth exchanges. If you never did any youth exchange, if you never heard about it, or even if you heard something, there is still always certain things to learn more. So that's a brief intro and I think we can go to Emil and maybe you can also tell a little bit briefly like where exactly you're from, what is kind of your working environment and also other people can ask questions. So you can use the chat and make sure you click everyone so everyone can see your questions and you can ask questions there. Those who are watching us on Facebook, you can write questions in the comments and we'll make sure we voice these questions. So Emil, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you and hello everybody. Nice to see some faces here also. I was afraid I'm gonna speak to my own picture only and that would have been sad. So yeah, I greet you from the tiny town in Cardleby in Finland and I am gonna share the screen here to ask Google where I am and show you. So here is Europe and here is Finland and I have the chat window in front of the zoom in but we will do it like this. So there you see. It's so small, it doesn't even have a name but I'm sure the only one who has been here of you is Paavo and I'm happy for that. Now I wanna exit the screen. No, wait, I'm gonna ask Google again about some pictures also. Do you see it? Yes. Yes, here is some. If we press Nikali on Google, we will see that. You will see a nice river and a small, small town. Yes, that's it. Now I wanna go out of the screen sharing. Where do I do that? There should be a red button stop sharing on the top usually, on the top of your window or I can stop your sharing if you want. Stop me, stop me. All right, great. Yes. So I'm gonna talk to you now for like 15 minutes about our European youth work and my view and our way to do it. I know many of you have a lot of experience in the area but it's always nice to share and compare and I'm happy to get the invitation to be here. Yeah, so I work for the municipality or for this small town and that's by that organization we do the projects. And it was 13 years ago I got the question suddenly that do you wanna go on a travel? It's free. You go as a leader for six girls and you also get paid for it a bit. And I was like, what's the catch on this now? And there was no catch and of course I wanted to do it and that was my first youth exchange and my first experience of a European youth work whatsoever. And it was crazy, it was not well arranged but it was still an amazing door that opened to and that became a big part of my life. And so I wanted to, I wanted more and I wanted to learn how to do projects myself and to see what it could be if you arranged it better or in a different way and together with the youths. So after that year by year I took over all our youth work piece by piece and kept doing more and new projects. And to be true, a lot of the work I do it was more fun the first years you did it. But the exception is the youth exchanges. It's still equally fun and it's still the greatest thing ever. So therefore I like to talk about this and invite new people to this world of youth exchanges also. We try to travel on a youth exchange every year and we arrange a youth exchange every second year. So it's no mass production but we are doing it every year. And our last projects was, they looked kind of similar to what our projects looked like 10 years ago. But the way of doing it and the way of looking at it has changed mainly in the way that it's been for me like a 10 year process of stepping back giving more responsibility to the youths and seeing that the main value is in the process and it's not about making a perfect event. And this is still ongoing I learned by every project. Yeah, when planning for this webinar I figured out the six points for success in this topic. And number one, the base of everything you do is create a good relation to the youths. That takes time and effort. I want to be a team player to create openness and trust. And I don't wanna be a teacher telling the kids what you should do this and you should not do this and so on. So that's important. Number two, the youths make the ideas. Some ideas are great, some are not but I still say yes, let's do it. At least in the beginning. Like for example, we were planning a youth exchange on topic of health, nature and creativity and one girl wrote on a post it like, nature music. And I said, wow, I have no idea what that is but this sounds great, let's do it. And this brings us to point three which is follow through their ideas. Support them to evolve the ideas but don't change them to something else. The youth need to experience that, that, whoa, I wrote this seven months ago on a post it and now we actually did it. So yes, seven months later, 40 international people went out to the forest made music and that became one of the most rememberable moments of that project. And point four, give them responsibility. As I mentioned before, it's usually easier if you do it yourself or if you tell them exactly what to do, but no, we should step back. We should support them, trust them and embrace the failures and try to make the best out of that. Because it's in this process, the learning happens and the learning is the result we want. Number five, do the work and the play all of you together. So do the cleaning, collecting the equipment, arranging the rooms and all these boring tasks builds the feeling that this is our project. We did the work and if it feels too boring to start with I use the tool of pizza to get the youths more interested in it from the start. And also, yes, do the play together. I try to take part on everything in a project like either as an observer or a participant to be there on every activity. I have a fly in here. Number six, humor, do stupid things. Laugh together at ourselves and at each other. This will make it so much easier when you later need to talk about more and more difficult stuff. So yeah, that's six pillars I wrote down now for this. And now a bit more practical about how we do it. So I know many of you don't have a youth group that meets regularly, and that's also fine. But I have an international club which we meet on a set time once a week most youths are 13 to 17 years old. So they are quite, I worked with quite young youths. They register in the autumn for one year. And on the club meetings, we do a lot of getting to know each other, a lot of team building and learning in the multicultural topic. And we prepare ourselves for traveling, for youth exchanges and we plan and do youth exchanges. So I mean, can I ask here, you mentioned the age that you mainly worked with 13, 17 years old. I can notice a tendency that many organizations tends to usually involve people over 18. Yeah. Would you have some arguments from your experience? Why would it matter to do it with the younger people? Well, I think this depends a lot on the culture where you come from also, that the maybe more here up north youths want to, you know, after they're 18 they can travel by themselves. So I think the need is when they're younger to do this as a first travel project without their parents and then they can go on to EVS or Solidarity Courses, excuse me, and stuff like that. So yeah, yeah, I know many projects are from 18 and up and it's of course a bit different. Yeah, the goal is that we go on a youth exchange every year and sometimes it doesn't happen the first year so it might be they are on the club meetings for more than a year before they go on a youth exchange so it can be a long process. But it's always here at the club that the project starts. We ask the question, do we want to do a project? And they will say, yes, we do. And for the new youths, they at this point need to learn a bit what is a European youth exchange because most people don't know and it's difficult to get going even doing the first steps if you don't know what it is. And also to get the extra motivation because the older youths who have been on a project, they know how good it is. So they can motivate also the newcomers for this because like which 14 year old want to spend hours and hours making an application for a project happening in a year. It's like that's an eternity for a young teen. So you need to be motivated and know that it's something good is coming. What is this kind of driving force for people? What do you think? What keeps them still doing something that might happen in one year also might not? Because when you apply, you also kind of never know. Exactly, what people are looking for the most actually when they start engaging in this process? Well, for me as with this ongoing group, it's like I see it as an organism also that the older infects the new ones and then they learn they have a collective knowledge. They know how that it will be good. And I also a goal for me is for every meeting that we will have fun also. Because if we do things that the youths think is boring, then they come here on their free time. If it's boring, most of them won't come next week. So yeah, also have fun. Do a bit of work for the project, but the fun is very important and motivation of course. And if you could go briefly because we have this kind of topic of from idea to application. So you gave some principles how to deal with young people. If you would say what are the kind of key steps for you when from the moment when people say, oh, we want to do something as you said music and environment, what was it? So like, okay, what are the main steps until people arrive at the common project? Yeah, yeah. Well, as I said with the motivation also that it can feel big and long time and you know, so I want to keep it simple from the beginning and the best thing is to start brainstorming what do the youths want to do? So this is the starting point. And then add the questions that why do we want to do it and how can we do it? So practically we meet, we produce a lot of post-its with activities. We would, I would like to do this. I would like to do this. And from that on, we discuss and select and evolve these ideas. And the part where my input is mostly needed it's the moment when we try to discover a theme and needs to see how it fits to the Erasmus Plus program to find something. Okay, youths don't want to be out, they want to do sports, they want to play games. Okay, well, we can get that to some kind of help team and maybe add something. So yeah, we put a lot of effort in the, from these post-its to make the daily schedule for the project. So we make a detailed daily schedule. And I also quite early put the names there. Okay, this is the workshop, this activity, who will do this? So there we put two names of two, three youths and that will give them a responsibility also. They know this is mine. Yeah. So do you want to say, Emil, that the program is actually also done by participants and it's not you doing all the work? Yes, yes. The daily program is all made by the youths and then parts are made by the other groups from other countries. If we talk a bit of partners also, there was some in this info about this, there was about how you choose or find partners. For us, when we've been in this area such many years, we have quite a network of good partners. So I'm in a good position, we can kind of choose everybody wants to be in our projects and we can kind of choose and therefore I can also put demands on the international partners. I demand them to write in the application and I demand input from their youths also so that there are also in the application some input from the youths in all countries. Yeah, and it's, I mean, if you're a newcomer in the area, maybe the others of you have better suggestions how you find good partners and so on because it is essential to have good partners and you have this like a view of youth work that sometimes how connects with yours. Maybe meanwhile, I will check with Narius if there are any questions either from Facebook live or here from the chat. Yeah, we have more reactions rather than questions. Let's say Mark from Facebook saying do stupid things makes it easier to talk about more serious things. Yes, so I think he's agreeing with a message then. Also Bruno says that could be a motto for his life and then it's also the question about under 18. Some people are commenting that yes, exchanges should be better promoted to under 18. So that would be somebody from Facebook commenting and in our chat on Zoom, Paolo is saying that never underestimate the power of food to interest teenagers. Daniel is saying that of course impact and the learning process is bigger on teenagers than 18 plus. So that would be maybe a comments and reactions to what Emil was sharing. Yes, and later we'll look at the MOOC environment and we do have some resources on partner finding and principles of partnership and where people can actually look for partners and what makes it to be a good partnership. Yeah, I think my time is running out. Right, so should we end it here and we can, yeah. I think we can continue with Paolo more from the approach from the National Agency. And anyway, I encourage people not only listen but to reflect, think what does it mean in your practice and if you still wanna ask some questions, please do so. We'll try to respond and if we won't manage with that, we can move on the discussion back to the online course discussions. So now I'm giving the, thank you very much Emil for your input and for your experiences, cool principles of working with young people and it was good to hear how you do your work. And now we're switching on to Paolo who is now probably in Helsinki. Yep, Helsinki Finland, the capital of Finland. And hi everybody, it's nice to talk to people. I also take care of organising trainings when they are the actual trainings when we meet and I enjoy meeting other people. And many times I deal with youth exchanges because that's the project type that I've been working with over 16 years in the Finnish National Agency. Well, shall we just go to the presentation? I will, my idea is to explain you one way of working with the young people and the tool that we have created for doing that. Like you heard from Emil's presentation that what we really support here in Finland is that the youth exchanges are exactly young people's projects that they make themselves rather than projects that adults have made for young people and recruit the young people later. And there's a story behind this. You probably understand that these funding programmes in Europe, they don't just fall from the sky. There's a lot of politics behind and there's lots of planning and lots of fighting for the funds. When Erasmus Plus programme started, it was a very difficult thing. There was a youth programme with funding that was called Youth in Action. It was a separate programme that was funded from a separate budget line. And the lifelong learning programme that was where the formal education programmes were. When it was decided that all of these would be go under the same programme, Erasmus Plus, the first thing that the colleagues from the formal education part said was to question that why in the youth programme we would have these one week long holidays for young people to Europe. They were referring to the youth exchanges. This is how youth work is many times seen from the outside and also I'm very well aware of the fact that the youth work is very different structurally and in the different countries in Europe. The colleagues in the commission had to explain them very carefully the original idea of youth exchanges. Youth exchanges are not one week trips abroad. They are long term learning experiences. It means that the original youth exchange that is still something that we always teach everyone to do comes with the idea of the participating group and then exactly like somebody said in the chat, the adults role is to support the groups in creating their own approach. Can we go to the next page, Lymunas? It was rather hard sometimes to explain this to many people in Europe because I'm also aware of the fact that there are lots of youth exchanges that have been made by adults. They have been applied, they will be granted and then the young people or normally young adults, university students will be recruited after the granting. And then when Finnish groups started contacting groups in Europe, they found out that they had really different ways of working in many times. We wanted to create some material that would highlight the fact that the young people can be involved on every stage of the youth exchange from its very beginning to its very end. We created this kind of a map or a poster that shows the whole process of youth exchanges. Many times youth exchanges are referred as the step seven which we say is the actual youth exchange when you go abroad or you host a group in your country. But with this map, you could show to your group of young people as well that it's actually a longer process and it takes a longer time. And there are lots of things that you have to be involved in during that process. So we cut the youth exchanges in nine different steps that start from building a group of young people who is interested to finding partners, creating the project together, creating the application, waiting for the decision, preparing for the actual exchange, then having the exchange, then taking care of dissemination and then reporting. And I can tell you that young people can be involved on every single step of this process. Limas, can you put the next one please? So the map itself is explained something but then you might understand that youth exchanges have a lot of things to think about. We have the other side of the map looked like this. On every step, we had four different parts. We would explain what are the important rules of the program that you have to respect regarding this step. Then we had an example from somebody who has been making youth exchanges. This is how I was involving my young people on this stage of project planning. Then we had also a part saying that don't do this because you might regret it later or it doesn't really work that well or it's not simply a good practice. And then we also had a step saying, this is where you can write it in the application if you, when you're filling in the application. We also produced this kind of leaflets that give examples on how to deal with a topic as an exercise. They're not really like that do this but it's more like that this is what you can do and this is what you can have a base when you're creating your own projects. Next one please. If you saw the back of the map you see that it's a lot of text and it might not be the most approachable thing. So at the time came when we decided that it might be easier to create a digital version out of that. So we have made the map into videos and exercises on the starofyuro.eu website. And this is an open platform that anybody can use and it still has the same structure as the map. It still has the same advice and do's and don'ts and rules that the map has but it's maybe a bit more approachable. So the website is starofyuro.eu and you can go there. Actually Lyman as if you stop sharing now I could share the screen from, oops, here we go. So the webpage looks like this and as you can see there are 10 playlists. Nine of them are the same steps that we have on the map. So there's a playlist for each of the steps. If you go to the step itself then you can see what's under it. There are mandatory tasks and there are optional tasks. And every step has two different videos. That explain the basic idea of that step, how you can involve your young people in that step and it also has the possibility to download the script in the written form. I wonder if we just, you know, watch one video here. Do you think it's all right, Lymanus? I think we don't have time for that. Okay, that's fine. Discover themselves, yeah. Sorry, the other thing is that the important rules of the program is always on the step three. So you can, we have collected what we call eligibility rules under this step. So you can check that you comply to all the rules that are needed in making the project. You can also download checklists from this page so that you can actually print it out and mark the things that you have done and what still needs to be done later. Then there are lots of optional steps where you can, for example, see how you can use an online tool for communication or building projects together. And then finally, it also has a link to the MOOC on Erasmus Plus that explains you how you fill in the application and it gives you an idea that once you have been discussing this part of your project with your partners and with your young people, then you can write this information in here. The final thing that I show is that if you join, you can go to any of these pages without joining and just use the content. But if you join the, hang on, so you can collect learning badges. Like I said that when this is a learning program and we call it learning by doing, it means that we allow the young people to do things that are new for them. They have new experiences and we as the adults can then reflect about those experiences and help the young people to understand what was imported about it and how does it help them in their own life. So if you join in, you can have Lime on us, help me, where do I go? You can go to any activity, so any activity has one badge to earn and also you earn a badge for the whole playlist. Exactly, so there is information on how you can earn this badge. So there's a task underneath and if you do, if you do what you are supposed to do, then you can get the badge. And the good thing about this is that when the young people are doing tasks during the planning of the youth exchanges and the implementation afterwards, they can collect these badges and realize all the new things that they have done during the project. Then it's easier for them also to maybe understand that that thing was new. That thing was new. I haven't done that before. What I learned in this project. So there is also a residential training course on the Star of Europe where we go through the whole youth exchange process within three days and there will be an online training version out of it as well. So if you are interested in this kind of approach, then also follow the European trading calendar. And if you see Star of Europe, things apply. That's it. Is that enough? Thank you very much, Paolo. Yeah, thanks a lot. I didn't know to see it to any new questions. So we just saw a resource where you can learn about every single step, how to go from the idea to the application and actually implement and share results and evaluate youth exchanges. So thanks a lot, Paolo, for sharing this. Maybe I'll just point out that of course there are different ways of looking at the thing in Europe, but there are few countries in Europe, Finland included where we don't actually grant any projects where we don't see that young people have been involved. And the argument for it is that if we are looking at the project in a learning program, we can easily argue that if the young people have been involved in the program for a longer time than just a few weeks of preparation and the exchange itself, then there is more learning with yourself. So Paolo, just to clarify, are you saying that if, let's say, a brilliant youth worker, a very smart one with a lot of ideas, if that youth worker meets another youth worker in another country, they come up with a great idea and they describe how they're gonna select people later and they write a perfect application. Do you say that actually this might not be supported because young people are missing? Definitely not be supported in Finland. No, there is no way we will grant that. First of all, if you look at the fact that these projects are young people's projects, then therefore they should be based on their needs. Many times in applications, I see that the basis or the need of the program comes from United Nations report or our OACD report or our EU report, that this is what generally happens in the world and therefore we have to do something and teach the young people. This is a weird approach. I think it's a very Soviet approach that adults think that they know what the young people need. The young people definitely need, know what they need and what interests them and youth work is support, it's enabling. It's doing something that the young people can reach the potential that they have. The other thing that I maybe have to say is that all the young people can do something. There are young people that have a lot of different obstacles in their participation, but they can still have opinions about what country to involve, what food to eat, what kind of activity is nice. Of course, if the young people need more support than the adults will provide it and not all the program has to be done by the young people, you can blend and as long as you agree with the groups. But the idea is that youth exchanges are not projects that adults or organizations make for young people. Youth exchanges are young people's own projects. That's the original idea and I think that in the new program it will be highlighted more. Thanks a lot, Pao, for the answer and clarification. I think you made it very clear. And yeah, now few words about the online course environment and what you can find at the online course in case you still didn't discover all the materials. I saw some people wrote in the chat saying, hey, I went through all the resources already and that's why I'm joining the webinar. Maybe other people did the other way around. They found out about the webinar and just joined it now. So I'll just share the screen to show what you can find on our online course which is hosted on the Canvas, free for teachers platform. Neri has already posted in the chat how you can get enrolled if you're not there yet. So when you start the course you will start with an overview of different possibilities that Erasmus Plus has to offer for the field of youth and it has what to offer for both young people and youth workers and you can explore all the possibilities there. This month and next month we will be hosting a series of webinars on youth exchanges and when you go there you can start from any action you want. So if you click on youth exchanges you get to that module and then it's plenty of materials there. I already added a few links to the upcoming webinars. We are planning to do one webinar at the end of June where we're gonna look at tools for youth exchanges. So what methods you can use for preparing, doing and evaluating youth exchange and then on the 9th of July we're gonna have one more webinar where we're gonna look at similarities and differences between youth exchanges and youth worker mobility. So we're gonna look at some differences and some tips and hints on that and when you go on youth exchange maybe I go through the module view. You are able to see some videos so you can explore what a youth exchange is, what are the rules of the game. You can go through some quizzes and check your knowledge if you feel you really know it well and then you will go through some basic steps, how to, for example, create a group, a youth group of youth exchange and this is explained not in a kind of long written text but this is explained in a short, snappy videos that really transmit the whole idea. So how you create a partnership that was this discussion there are different links and different tips how to do it. And also if you are not from so-called program country you're not from EU and not from one of the country that has own national agency you can explore still how you can be a partner and how you can host a youth exchange in your country because all the neighboring countries around EU also can take part in the program and we invite you to participate in discussion forums there and you can also learn how to design a youth exchange program how the example of the program looks like so you can actually really see a practical tips that will make you in the development of the youth exchange. We have some videos on impact of youth exchanges. We ask you to discuss what creates a good impact. We also have module about youth pass and the value of recognizing learning happening at youth exchanges. And also we collected plenty of examples how the youth exchange looks like in practice. Most of them are in English or they have subtitles in English and you can watch and learn from the experiences of others and actually meet peers on the online platform and discuss with people there. And actually if you go to a discussions in the online forum, you can also see that there are some calls for partnerships or you can initiate some calls for partnerships. So that's it about the course. We will meet with you online or we're gonna meet with you at the other webinar and roll to the course like our page on Facebook just search for MOOC Youth. You can also join our Facebook group which has a few thousand learners who already completed the course previously or they are still eager to learn about youth exchanges or other opportunities of Erasmus Plus. So for today, thank you very much for our guest speakers for giving us your time and your ideas to admit it to Parva and also to everyone who were with us. And I'd like to launch a question for you. So if you are checking on mobile phone or desktop you should be able to see a question how useful was this webinar for you? And there are four options, very useful, somewhat useful, not very useful or you expect something different. If you joined via web version, maybe you don't see the poll but at least you can write in the chat and share a little bit how was this webinar for you? And I'll wait a little bit for the votes to come in and then I'll end the poll. We have 80% of people who voted already, two, three. Okay, so I'm probably gonna close the poll, no new votes coming in and I can share the result. So seems that people found it very useful or somewhat useful. So make sure to comment and give us a feedback on the Canvas Network. You can always write us a message saying what else you would expect what are the topics that you would like to have a webinar on because we will continue organizing such events further on throughout the year. And you probably know that it's the last year of the Rosmos Plus program but there will be a new program coming in and we're gonna come back with some news in the autumn. Okay, so thank you very much and then have a good rest of the week and good summer.