Youth Work in the Post Digital

Young people first, digital along the way

Youth Work in the Post-Digital (YWPD) is an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership in the youth field that strengthens youth workers’ digital competence in Finland, Ireland and Germany. The project is coordinated by Foróige (Ireland) and delivered together with JFF (Germany) and Humak University of Applied Sciences (Finland). It runs from September 2026 to April 2028.

Digital technology is woven into every part of young people’s lives, yet many youth workers still lack the confidence to use it meaningfully in their practice. Rather than teaching specific tools or apps, the project takes a post-digital approach to youth work: digital elements become a natural part of everyday practice, always in service of youth work goals such as inclusion, participation and empowerment, not of the technology itself.

The three partner organisations will train 150 youth workers through two rounds of national foundation training, an international knowledge exchange, online continuing professional development sessions and peer-led communities of practice. Particular attention goes to youth workers with low digital confidence and to young people with fewer opportunities, including those in rural or isolated areas.

The project produces multilingual training materials, videos and an open digital resource library, all of which will be published on digitalyouthwork.eu.

Objectives

– Strengthen the partner organisations’ own capacity to deliver sustainable youth work training fit for a post-digital reality.
– Give youth workers the confidence and pedagogical skills to use digital tools creatively in the service of inclusion.
– Build a systematic knowledge base on how digital tools are used to promote inclusion in youth work.

Results

– A training manual and facilitator toolkit
– A report on existing post-digital youth work practices across the three countries