The Skill IT for Youth Comparative Study on young people’s digital skills and youth work shows that youth organizations from Ireland, Norway, Poland and Romania still have work to do in order to become key actors in delivering digital education programs and services for youth. The organizations need to develop their overall capacity, to digitize and develop organizational strategies for that, train their youth workers in the field, and also change the public perception of the role the youth sector should play in developing young people’s media and information literacy skills and knowledge.
The main goal of the Skill IT for Youth research effort was to collect relevant information that can be used by the project partners in developing meaningful tools for youth organizations interested in enhancing their work with young people, and digitizing more their organizations. The specific goals of the research were:
- Provide data-driven knowledge on:
- digital youth work, youth workers, youth organizations and young people’s needs regarding ICT, digital and social media,
- the labor market’s needs and expectations with regards to the young people’s digital skills.
- Map the existing digital skills education programs in Ireland, Norway, Poland and Romania;
- Identify the role of the NGOs in developing the digital skills in young people;
- Identify the needs of youth workers in order to develop high quality projects for young people in the area of digital skills.
After conducting national desk research with the purpose of finding and analyzing the available research, studies and reports that focus on the digital skills of young people, the Skill IT for Youth partners reached relevant stakeholders from their networks, approaching them through interviews and focus groups following the research objectives. Thus, we involved stakeholders from Ireland, Norway, Poland and Romania:
- 116 young people (16-25 years old);
- 105 youth workers;
- 39 senior managers from youth organizations/NGOs working with young people;
- 12 employers (companies’ representatives).
You can explore the research results by reading the Skill IT national reports we developed for each country from the partnership, and also the comparative report that brings together the most relevant information from the national studies and gives an overall perspective on youth digital skills and on youth organizations’ needs and potential in the field.
Read the full reports here: https://digipathways.io/intellectual-outputs/io1-research/
The Skill IT for Youth Comparative Report extracts, summarizes and compares data from the national reports about the young people’s needs regarding digital skills and future skills, employers’ expectations towards the young people as future employees, and youth workers and youth organizations’ needs and potential in developing young people’s digital skills.
Here we extracted for you the main research results available in the comparative report:
