What is VYW?
This is an international strategic partnership project funded by the EU Erasmus+ programme.
The project will involve training of youth workers in the world of gaming. Three youth workers from each country will enrol on a new Postgraduate Diploma course in Games and Digital Media in Global Youth Work, specially developed for this project by the Limerick Institute of Technology, Ireland. Training will be carried out in each of the partner countries and also through weekly webinars. Once trained, the youth workers will begin engaging young people through this medium.
The project will also bring young people together from three different countries to collaborate and develop skills within an online gaming environment and in a real world context. The project will use a multiplayer realm in Minecraft/Starck as the collaborative project space. The task to be completed in this game is to construct a “Virtual Youth Town” in Minecraft.
The project is based around the delivery of five outputs as follows:
IO 1: Developing a “toolkit” for game-based youth work
IO 2: Virtual Youth Town
IO 3: Community of practice on Game-based youth work
IO 4: Gaming modification
IO 5: Postgraduate Diploma (starting in September 2016)
The project will be carried out over a two year period 2016 – 2018 and will culminate with dissemination activities in each partner country. It is also hoped that additional funding can be found to enable some members of the youth groups involved to visit the real versions of the Youth town they have created, in each other’s countries.
The project partners are:
- Ireland – Youth Work Ireland Tipperary (formerly TRYS) (Coordinator)
- Ireland – Limerick Institute of Technology
- Greece – Association of Active Youths, Florina
- UK – Momentum World CIC (also working with Hao2.eu, Autus and Express CIC)
