The more digitalised the world becomes, the more we acknowledge the need to imrpove and encourage e-participation of youth. Between the 2nd and the 5th of November, a conference took place in Belgrade, named ”ONL-YOUTH: are we lost in online space?”. The conference was the final event of a long-termn project ” Innovation and eLearning in Service of Youth Work & Non Formal Education in Europe”, implemented by Hajde-Da.

The conference brought together youth workers, non-formal educators (trainers), young people, experts for online learning in different fields from Albania, Croatia, Finland, Kosovo, Lithuania, Macedonia, Spain and Serbia, with the aim to bridge the gap that exists between youth work, non-formal education and online learning and digital tools.

The 2-day conference contained plenary sessions and parallel workshops that explored various topics. One of the most useful elements of the conference was the workshop where the participants in the project presented the results from the online courses they organised during Summer. The group participated actively with feedback and advice on how to optimise online courses and how to make them interactive.

Mila Josifovska, who was the representative in this project from CID, attended the final evaluation meeting of the whole project. We asked her what was the impact of the project for the consortium organisations, and she answered:

What we drew out as a conclusion from this meeting is that young people are still not used to or interested as much into online courses and that they would rather go to a foreign country to experience the culture and meet new people in person, while getting the same amount of knowledge. We identified a lot of challenges that are worth working on and we believe that it will be very beneficial for all that we start working on them as well in other forms.

More information about the project objectives and activities can be found here.