WINDOW YOUTH Project
“Empowering young people from disadvantaged backgrounds through podcasting, media literacy and soft skills for civic and political participation.”

Digital skills, soft skills such as critical thinking and media literacy are key skills and competences needed by today’s modern citizens. The situation is even more critical for the disadvantaged young people.

Every generation has its own voice and its own tools to express and create positive change. What used to be radio for older generations is now podcasts for this generation.

Podcast creation is a very important tool to foster media literacy and civic engagement of the young people by providing them with the possibility to express their voice in a strong and autonomous way that are free from the media establishment.

Taking into consideration these facts, Window Youth was created and launched in January, 2024.

The project aims to empower disadvantaged youth through trainings on hard skills, soft skills and media literacy to use podcasts as a tool in their local contexts in order to amplify their voices.

The consortium consists of Action Synergy – Greece, Velos Youth – Greece, Two Plus Two – Italy, Volonteurope – Belgium, HESED – Bulgaria, Asociatia Imago Mundi – Romania, University of Seville – Spain.

The specific objectives of the project are:
• To build the capacity of young people, youth workers/trainers and youth organizations to use podcasts as a tool in order to increase the political engagement of their target group;
• To increase the participation of young men and women as agents of change in the political life through creation and dissemination of podcasts;
• To augment the use of podcast spaces for communicating the voice of disadvantaged young men and women as agents of change in politics at community, regional, national and international levels through podcasts.

To achieve these goals, the project will go through 5 steps:
STEP 1 – Local Needs Analysis: Conducting comprehensive research to understand the context in each partner countries.

STEP 2 – Creation of Training Materials: Develop training materials through non formal approaches. An e-learning platform is also going to be adapted in order to fit the needs of the target group.

STEP 3 – Training of Youth Workers/trainers: Organize 6 webinars and 2 international trainings in Spain and Greece to train and share experiences among youth workers.

STEP 4 – Podcast labs, organization of local trainings and production of podcasts: In the first part, the 7 podcast labs (one per organization) will be established. The trained youth workers/trainers will deliver local training to 50 people per organization. In the second part, the disadvantaged young people will develop their podcasts with the continuous mentoring and support from the youth organizations and trainers to the young participants from disadvantaged backgrounds.

STEP 5 – Providing the young people of a disadvantaged background with a local and global scene and a motivation to raise their voice in the form of Castival; the local and international festivals: The last step is related with the organisation and delivery of local festivals in each participating country, and an international festival in Brussels, where the young people who participate in the PODlabs will showcase their work to the world, meet with other young podcasters in the flesh, exchange ideas and thoughts, create networks and collaborations among them and between them and the visitors who will attend the festivals.

Press Release

Website: Window Youth Project

Disclaimer: Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.