Press Release: PR1 Greek Focus Group Report Summary
On 18 May of 2022, KMOP-Social Action and Innovation Center organised a focus group in Greece, in which seven youth workers with over five years of experience participated. The focus group aimed to gain a full view of the current state of digital competencies amongst youth workers and map their needs and interests in digital youth work. According to the participants, digital tools should be seen as a means to make their work more enriching and not as a substitute. Even though the majority of the responses revealed a generally positive stance towards the complementary use of digital tools, it remains evident that lack of knowledge or resources (e.g., human capital and infrastructure) still prevails. As regards their thoughts on the most important digital skills to use in youth work, these referred to competences needed to effectively and responsibly use, create and share digital resources for learning. They also suggested that youth workers should be further motivated to become familiar with the various tools they need/want to use (e.g., Jamboard, Mentimeter, Padlet, Canva, Mirro, as well as different social media), as general digital skills are sometimes not enough. They should explore the numerous possibilities that the digital era has opened up and learn more about how to a) engage youth with physical disabilities, b) support young people to become active citizens in a digital society, c) keep the participants’ interest active and d) respect GDPR and Copyrights at the same time.