Humak and Irish organization Foróige begin cooperation in the field of digital youth work
Digital youth work has been around for many decades already, but it increased rapidly in the 2010s when smartphones became more widespread. Since then, many forms of digital youth work have been developed and tested. Digital youth work does not happen only in online environments, but also in face-to-face situations. (Hernelahti & Tuominen, 2023.)
An EU expert group defined in 2017, that digital youth work means “proactively using or addressing digital media and technology in youth work. Digital youth work is not a youth work method – digital youth work can be included in any youth work setting.” (European Commission 2017.)
Humak has been a forerunner at teaching digital youth work in Finland. During the past few years, Humak has also had various projects on digital youth work, such as Digisti, Diggiloo, Digigym and Digital Hospital Youth Work.
Foróige and interest in Humak’s digital hospital youth work
It was the latter, that sparked the interest of an Irish NGO, Foróige. They heard about Digital Hospital Youth Work Project at a conference in Berlin in February 2023. The project was then presented by Taru Lahtela, a student at Humak and a youth worker in the project. Since then, Taru has completed her thesis on the project.
Foróige is a leading youth organization in Ireland. They work with over 50 000 young people aged from 10 to 18 years old. Our Humak representatives were interested mainly in the work that Foróige does with Virtual Reality and its possibilities. Foróige has been able to do collaborations with Meta, and they have acquired multiple VR headsets for themselves.
Foróige and Humak decided to apply funding for an Erasmus KA2 Small scale partnership project to learn more about each other’s innovative digital youth work. The project was granted funding, and as a part of the project, three people from Foróige came to Helsinki in early April 2024 to learn more about digital youth work in Finland.
Erasmus KA2 project and the Irish visit to Helsinki
Two community education students, Alma and Otso, were strongly involved in planning and implementing the study visit to Helsinki. Three lecturers were also included: Suvi, Miki and Sari.
The Irish youth work experts; Tom, Caroline and Adam arrived in Helsinki on Monday, and they met Alma and Otso on Tuesday morning at the central railway station. Together they went to Humak’s campus at Valkea talo, met Suvi, Miki and Sari and all the group got to know each other with some social games. Tuesday’s main theme was the digital hospital youth work. Alma, Sari and Taru represented the project, and the group visited the New Children´s Hospital in Helsinki on the afternoon.
Our Irish guests were very interested in digital hospital youth work that, as a project, supports the maintenance, promotion and inclusion of the psychological and social well-being of children and young people with long-term illnesses and vulnerable life situations. Now the third year of development has started, and thanks to Regional State Administrative Agency’s development funding, operations are being opened for all University hospitals around Finland. Professional youth work is done on Monday evenings on the Discord platform. The number of participants in the activities has been small, but the activity has been significant for these young people in the target group.
On Wednesday, they group visited the Sekasin Chat to learn about the youth work and support chat that the Sekasin collective does. Then they went to visit the Sua Varten Somessa project to hear about their work and gruesome facts that youth face in the online world. The last showcase visit was at Youth Academy and especially Digiraati, where they try to introduce youth into civic engagement.
On Thursday, the group took the metro to east Helsinki to visit the youth house Kipinä, which is operated by the City of Helsinki Youth Department. The group heard an introduction to Helsinki´s digital youth work in general. The youth house Kipinä focuses on music, podcasts and video making. They give youth a platform and a chance to work on their creative skills in many ways.
Right picture: The studio at Kipinä, that the youth can use for their music creation needs.
Future prospects of cooperation
The week was coming to an end, and we had a very positive reflection of the activities of the week. It was great getting to know our Irish visitors! The project and collaborations are only just beginning. We gave each other positive feedback back and forth and learned many new things about youth work and its possibilities in the future. The week was successful all around.
As the next steps of our collaboration, Miki, Sari and Suvi from Humak will travel to Ireland in May and see the work of Foróige firsthand. Before that, Foróige will send two of the VR headsets to Alma and Otso, so they as students can also participate in the meeting in Ireland through the virtual reality.
Writers:
Alma Norres, community education student and doing her internship at Digital Youth Work in Hospital -project
Otso Mäkelä, community education student and a semi-professional in esports, was part of a gaming education study as his first internship
Suvi Tuominen, MSSc, community education lecturer, Humak University of Applied Sciences
6.5.2024
