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We want to thank you one last time for signing up to receive regular updates on the YouCount project and for following our work during the past years! With every newsletter, we hope that you enjoyed getting to know YouCount and the people behind the project better. In our final newsletter, we continue to travel to one of our cases, introduce you to young citizen scientists and inform you about events you might have missed. During the past months, we have been busy closing the cases and starting to get an overview of all the findings. YouCount members gathered physically, digitally, on local, national and international level. Many countries organised a national workshop with their young citizen scientists inviting stakeholders that were involved in the case. On an international level, the project had two virtual events, the final Consortium Meeting and final webinar where YouCount youth shared their experiences. Last but certainly not least, we celebrated our work at the final conference in Brussels this month that featured a hybrid exhibition and workshop. But YouCount is not done yet! During the next weeks, we will publish reports, scientific papers and blog posts on the resource section of our website to distribute our results and findings. Look out for YouCount's handbook and toolkit! On behalf of the entire YouCount team, we wish you an inspiring reading of the last newsletter, a relaxing christmas time and an exciting new year!
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Case Studies
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#1 Young people's belonging and connectedness in Lithuania
The Lithuanian case study is located in Panevezys' district municipality in the north of the country. More than half of Panevezys' territory is agricultural land and as a post-soviet society, it faces low participation in community activities. Youth is no exception and thus lack engagement in economic, political and social activities. What is more is that the region has poor employment opportunities, resulting in many young people moving away. This case study aims to strengthen young people's sense of belonging and connectedness to the local community while combating emigration and unemployment issues through citizen science (CS). CS is very new in Lithuania and there are no policies in place supporting it. However, there is a potential to spark interest into CS among young people from rural regions and thereby contribute to solving problems linked to social apathy and exclusion. Kaunas University of Technology coordinates the Lithuanian case, aiming to strengthen youth social belonging and connectedness to Panevezys through CS. Read more about YouCount's cases here.
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Evaluation
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#2 Voices from Youth at YouCount’s Final Conference
This section focuses on evaluation. We ask YouCount youth across the nine countries about their experiences within the project. Our journey goes to the youth panel at the final conference this time, where we listened to Evie Ball, Arishel Dowie, Andrew Dirzu and Khaleel Mamsa from the UK case and El Mustapha Lemrabatt from the Spain case. What do you get out of being a part of YouCount? Evie: “To hear different point of views. I mixed with people I wouldn’t normally come across and loved this kind of networking.” Mustapha: “The connections I made with policymakers are very valuable. Through direct communication, young migrants and politicians could talk about societal problems.” Andrew: “I saw value in small changes we achieved such as installing traffic lights on a road where youth would often walk.” Khaleel: “We were able to reach out to areas where people didn’t feel included.” Arishel: “I joined the new youth board that will establish spaces for 13-19 year olds.” What should YouCount look at when it comes to social inclusion of youth? Arishel: “We need to open up resources and make them accessible for everyone’s needs so people can meet and have a voice.” Andrew: “To talk to people with diversity.” Khaleel: “Personal communication is more fruitful than sending emails.” Mustapha: “Building relationships between policymakers, stakeholders and youth.” Evie: “The importance of accessible spaces, because every adaption makes a difference.”
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Events
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#3 YouCount's network grew impressively since it started! We participated in seminars, conferences and workshops at both national and international level to present our project and become more visible. We are happy to share some of the highlights from the past months.
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Youth Citizen Social Science Contributing to Social Inclusion – Final Conference
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YouCount’s Final Conference took place in Brussels in early December. The two-day hybrid event "Youth Citizen Social Science Contributing to Social Inclusion" was designed for academics, citizen science practitioners, youth and other organisations as well as policymakers interested in social inclusion of young people. In interactive sessions, presentations, and round-table discussions, YouCount’s researchers and young citizen scientists presented and discussed key insights and findings with actors working with science policy or social inclusion. The conference also featured a traveling exhibition co-created with young citizen scientists and a pre-workshop.
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Final Webinar with Youth: New perspectives of belonging & being heard
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Our young co-researchers shared their experiences in the final webinar organised by YouCount & ECSA WG EIE. With warmth, curiosity and openness, they invited everyone to learn about their work. 20 young co-researchers contributed to the webinar, shaping the content and discussion. They explored their learnings, interests and collaborative relationships with case researchers. Did you miss the webinar? You can watch it here.
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Social innovation and CSS through participatory film – Workshop in Budapest
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Our research team in Hungary presented its methodological findings at the conference "Visuality, Action, Participation - Visual Interventions and Participatory Research" at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest. The conference organisers invited artists, filmmakers, researchers and students from different universities in Hungary to provide an overview of visual social interventions within the field of social science.
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Final Consortium Meeting
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The YouCount team gathered for their final Consortium Meeting - this time digitally. The meeting was a good opportunity to discuss findings from the project and a good exercise prior to the final conference.
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Youth, community, belonging – Workshop in the UK
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The UK case presented experiences, findings and continuous innovation at their national workshop. Young citizen scientists (YCS), other young people, adult researchers from the team and stakeholders, including local authorities, third sector and community members, joined. The aim of the workshop was to share findings of the local Preston case on social inclusion and listen to the experiences of YCS and other young people who participated in the project. Moreover, it was a good opportunity to celebrate the YCS' accomplishments and the social innovation achieved through the case study.
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Meeting in Italy: Fostering multicultural togetherness & Detecting paths for the future
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In a meeting in Naples, the Italian team summed up the local case and Living Lab experiences to detect paths for future projects. The aim of "Living together in Forcella: young narratives and shared projects" was to define a shared vision about how to promote a multicultural and responsible way of togetherness. About 50 young citizens with native and migrant background as well as local stakeholders participated in the meeting.
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Local youth engagement with sustainable activities – Workshop in Denmark
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The Danish case held a national workshop to discuss how to engage youth in their local environment through everyday life sustainable activities within education, volunteering, and public information. The team invited youth organisations, researchers, teachers' unions, libraries, educators, consultants, and young people to the workshop. More than 20 people with relevant experience or interest in one or more of these areas joined.
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Common Signs – A Mini-conference in Hungary
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YouCount's case study in Szeged (Hungary) organised their national workshop with and for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The "Common Signs Miniconference" was organised in collaboration with the Environmental Social Science Research Group (ESSRG), the Research Centre of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Szeged and the National Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing People. In the spirit of communication accessibility, the conference provided written and sign language interpretation and live transcription. More than 40 people from different organisations were present including the deaf community, the Szeged School for Hard of Hearing, students, sign language learners and the local government. The Miniconference gave inspiration on how events can facilitate more inclusive interactions.
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News
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#4 There is still a lot happening in YouCount and its project members are busy documenting everything. We were quite active on our blog and resource page where we reported by now on all cases. Our accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter are also still up and running! Below you find both recent publications as well as project news:
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The transformative power of collaborative research with hard of hearing youths
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"Slow science and 'caring' research" – In this paper, YouCount members explore the transformative power of a collaborative research on their own academic perceptions and functions. Barbara Mihók, Judit Juhász and Judit Gébert have been working with hard of hearing youths since autumn 2021 in Szeged (Hungary) to increase social inclusion in the city. As senior hearing academics, they identified aspects where academic functions led to inner transformations. Barbara, Judit and Judit recognised the overwhelming importance of relational aspects and caring as well as the perceived and fostered “slowness” of the research. They concluded that inclusion can be viewed as a joint, interdependent transformation of all actors involved towards the defragmentation of community.
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Action Research and Citizen Social Science
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How can citizen social science contribute to addressing one of the three edges of action research (AR) identified by Larrea (2022) as the stagnation of global democratisation? And how can action research’s long tradition creating spaces where researchers and practitioners work together in a shared commitment to democratic social change (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003) inform the nascent citizen social sciences (CSS) field? The guest editorial by Patricia Canto Farachala and Reidun Norvoll shows how AR and CSS can be combined in different social contexts with different purposes to strengthen democratic social change. Moreover, by directly involving citizens, particularly young people at risk of exclusion, they offer clues on the challenges of creating inclusive environments as a prerequisite for democratic social change.
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Participatory Communication & CSS...
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...Lessons Learned and New Ethical and Political Challenges - Patricia Canto, Ingar Brattbakk, Paulina Budryte and Reidun Norvoll contribute with this paper to the discussion around the epistemic foundations of citizen social science (CSS) by drawing from participatory communication. They argue that the latter’s long history reflecting on the ethical and political challenges that emerge from its dialogical perspective to empowerment and social change could enhance the nascent CSS concept. In establishing that relation, they also explore how CSS can further develop participatory communication. To that end, they look into YouCount, that, from its inception, has understood dialogical communication as inextricably linked to the research process.
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The UK Case explores Gender and Social Justice with lots of creativity
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The Preston research team employed creative methods instead of traditional focus group discussions to delve into young people's perspectives on gender and social justice. Recognising that youth might hesitate to express their true thoughts and feelings in a focus group, the team opted for creative activities that fostered a safe and welcoming environment. In this blog post, eight young citizen scientists (YCS) share insights from these sessions. The YCS shed light on issues related to gender differences that young people experience in Preston. Said issues encompassed sex discrimination, expectations regarding self-presentation, and workplace hierarchies. YCS also explored potential solutions to address these issues. Finally, the artistic creations were displayed in a gallery.
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Ten cases across nine countries
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Do you need a quick recap on what the YouCount project is actually about? There you go: Located in nine European countries, YouCount works to co-create new knowledge and innovations that increase social inclusion of youth across ten case studies. Each case focuses on youth who face different challenges linked to social inclusion. This way, we want to identify positive drivers for a more inclusive society with and for youth. YouCount will further evaluate how its co-creative approach based on citizen social science works out in practice – in each case as well as across cases. We see this evaluation itself as a co-creative process which starts right here. In every newsletter, we hear from youth how they are experiencing the project.
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Stay tuned and get in touch!
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Stay updated on developments and reach out to us by signing up to our community of interest, checking out our blog and following YouCount on social media:
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