1
00:00:05,700 --> 00:00:19,770
Dariusz: Welcome to UNDER 30, the podcast series by the youth partnership that brings the research
results, explores trends in young people's lives and themes relevant for youth policy and practice.

2
00:00:20,939 --> 00:00:31,350
In our podcast, we have discussed many times the impact of COVID 19 and
all restrictions related to the pandemic on the lives of young people.

3
00:00:32,230 --> 00:00:41,850
Some time ago we also had an episode on the knowledge Hub: COVID 19
impact on the youth sector that was developed by the youth partnership.

4
00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:58,020
The Hub has been there for a year now and since it was officially launched in October, 2020 at the Youth
Knowledge Forum it has been filled with new information, research papers and other relevant materials.

5
00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:04,200
In this episode, we take a closer look at how the Hub functions nowadays.

6
00:01:04,500 --> 00:01:11,770
What are the findings from the questionnaires and briefings and what are the key priority themes.

7
00:01:12,780 --> 00:01:15,860
We will look also at the future of the Hub.

8
00:01:17,129 --> 00:01:30,219
Our guests today, Irina Lonean and James O'Donovan, the researchers involved in the development
of briefings and surveys will provide us with some insights into what's new on the Hub.

9
00:01:31,199 --> 00:01:38,459
My name is Dariusz Grzemny and I'm co-hosting this episode with
Lana Pasic from the EU - Council of Europe youth partnership.

10
00:01:39,089 --> 00:01:40,499
So, let's start.

11
00:01:45,589 --> 00:01:49,069
Welcome to the next episode of our Under 30 podcast.

12
00:01:49,939 --> 00:01:58,819
Today, we are talking about something that's not new because it
has existed already for a year, but it's changing, it's developing.

13
00:01:58,839 --> 00:02:05,481
I'm talking about the knowledge Hub on COVID-19 impact on the youth sector that was actually created a year ago.

14
00:02:05,481 --> 00:02:07,577
There is a lot of things available there.

15
00:02:07,577 --> 00:02:08,827
There is a lot of research.

16
00:02:08,857 --> 00:02:14,417
There is a lot of possibilities to also interact, and provide data, and so on.

17
00:02:14,459 --> 00:02:18,589
Let's have a look a little bit  on how it functioned  in the last year.

18
00:02:19,249 --> 00:02:32,423
But Lana at the beginning, can you  recall actually the objectives of this and why it was created
and, with what intention, and in your opinion, was this intention valid and was it fulfilled?

19
00:02:33,772 --> 00:02:52,010
Lana: So we started working on the Hub in spring of last year with the onset of the pandemic,
realizing that there was really a need to gather the resources, data, and information
about the impact of COVID-19 on young people and the impact on the youth sector at large.

20
00:02:52,049 --> 00:03:02,489
But also to look at what were some of the responses coming, both from the sector, from
young people, from youth organizations and also the responses from the policymakers.

21
00:03:03,119 --> 00:03:28,960
So the Hub was created really to host the different types of data, information, knowledge, resources about
the impact of COVID-19, as well as to provide analysis of the results of different findings from studies, from
questionnaires, from surveys, not only done by the partnership, but also done by those outside of our networks.

22
00:03:29,008 --> 00:03:35,783
Besides for that, it also houses the information about what is happening at the national level.

23
00:03:35,783 --> 00:03:42,586
We have gathered this information through surveys to our networks of EKIP and PEYR, but also through desk review.

24
00:03:42,616 --> 00:03:52,134
So trying to look at what is happening in each country, what are the impacts and
what are the responses at national level, across the Council of Europe member states.

25
00:03:52,824 --> 00:03:58,256
Dariusz: Thank you Lana, for reminding us what was there, what was the objective of the hub and its functions.

26
00:03:58,286 --> 00:04:03,416
There is a lot of materials being put there, a lot of research papers to read.

27
00:04:03,457 --> 00:04:18,955
Irina you have been, or you are one of the authors of the fourth briefing on what's actually happening
when it comes to research on the impact of COVID-19 on youth sector, on youth work and youth organizations.

28
00:04:19,345 --> 00:04:23,065
If you can share with us a little bit, what are the key findings?

29
00:04:23,065 --> 00:04:24,115
What are the themes?

30
00:04:24,204 --> 00:04:26,184
What is this impact actually?

31
00:04:26,184 --> 00:04:27,674
What is the research saying about it.

32
00:04:27,739 --> 00:04:46,009
Irina: Well,  the knowledge hub came to bring together information that already existed in a large amount of
research and papers and reports starting at the beginning of last year when the COVID 19 outbreak appeared.

33
00:04:46,034 --> 00:04:51,104
But also we take into account where we don't know things that we would like to know.

34
00:04:51,734 --> 00:05:13,088
And, the main findings of our analysis or meta analysis of what it's already put online, in terms of researchers
that first, we have a lot of information on the fact that COVID-19 impacted the youth sector a lot at the beginning.

35
00:05:13,217 --> 00:05:33,652
Youth work was designed to be mainly face to face very much in Europe, in international settings,
based on mobilities, very much based on a personal relationship between the youth worker and
young people that happened in youth centers or in places where people actually met face to face.

36
00:05:33,663 --> 00:05:36,933
And this was a very important part of youth work.

37
00:05:37,263 --> 00:05:54,002
And because of COVID-19 all this important part of youth work disappeared for a while, and then it
needed to be reinvented because of a lot of restrictions of physical distancing rules and so on.

38
00:05:54,422 --> 00:06:16,131
So this is the first thing that, from the point of view of how youth workers and the youth sector
approach youth, young people, we needed a change of methodology and we needed to use something that
existed, but was a lot less developed until last year that it's online youth work and digital youth work.

39
00:06:16,911 --> 00:06:33,262
The second thing is that, we noticed that at least in 2020, but things seem to be continued in 2021,
the youth sector was not considered an essential sector of services for people affected by COVID-19.

40
00:06:33,562 --> 00:06:54,700
And this meant that many youth organizations, youth centers, institutions working with young people suffered
a lot in terms of loss of resources and they didn't have the support they needed to continue their work and
to learn new methods to engage with young people in the new settings, with physical distancing, and so on.

41
00:06:54,717 --> 00:06:59,027
The third thing it's that these are, let's say, bad news.

42
00:06:59,417 --> 00:07:09,250
The good news is that we also saw that young people and youth workers
mobilized to organize young people to support the response to COVID-19.

43
00:07:09,292 --> 00:07:24,330
And I would say that we want to focus a bit more on this response to COVID-19 and how young people participated
and new ideas to engage with young people in the next publications that we prepare for the knowledge hub.

44
00:07:24,340 --> 00:07:38,708
So we will, we try to pass from providing information on the impact of COVID on the youth
sector to new ideas on how the youth sector is developing in response to this impact.

45
00:07:40,367 --> 00:07:41,147
Dariusz: Thank you Irina.

46
00:07:41,219 --> 00:07:53,833
It's good that there is not only bad news because the bad news we probably all know because we had a couple of
podcasts, a couple of episodes before, on the impact of COVID-19 on the youth sector, but there's also good news.

47
00:07:53,876 --> 00:07:58,627
There's one point that struck me a bit, a lot actually, because it appears everywhere.

48
00:07:58,807 --> 00:08:12,553
Also in the research regarding formal education,  it's this disappearance of young people, this losing touch,
losing contact  or losing young people actually on the way which happened in formal education while it was online.

49
00:08:12,613 --> 00:08:22,793
And also it happened in youth work online, like losing contact with people, especially coming from
the underprivileged groups and also young people with fewer opportunities, which is a very bad sign.

50
00:08:22,825 --> 00:08:32,836
Maybe we can talk a little bit about the gaps because we have been talking a lot
in this podcast about the lack of evidence, the lack of research, the lack of data.

51
00:08:32,921 --> 00:08:38,568
I mean,  definitely a lot has been done in the past year, but there is still things missing.

52
00:08:38,598 --> 00:08:40,878
There is still a lot of information, a lot of data missing.

53
00:08:41,148 --> 00:08:42,588
What are these gaps?

54
00:08:42,648 --> 00:08:45,348
Irina, James, maybe we can reflect a little bit on that.

55
00:08:46,273 --> 00:08:54,263
Irina: If I may, I think first gap that we identified and it's to an extent easy to explain why we have this gap.

56
00:08:54,364 --> 00:09:03,188
But we are looking now for more research on this, it's the attention to
the long-term impact of COVID-19 on young people and on the youth sector.

57
00:09:03,368 --> 00:09:14,669
On young people, because we had a year where the life of all young people and all
people, for that matter, actually changed and we started to interact differently.

58
00:09:14,909 --> 00:09:20,627
And for young people development, how they interact with the others, it's extremely important for the future.

59
00:09:20,655 --> 00:09:30,744
The long-term impact of COVID-19 pandemic and how the new normal
is appearing, it's something that we need to continue to research.

60
00:09:30,984 --> 00:09:41,154
And this is also applicable to the youth sector because the youth sector
actually learned to use more digital youth work and digital tools.

61
00:09:41,544 --> 00:09:51,784
And it's interesting to see how going beyond the pandemic some of the things
will be kept and integrated in the larger pool of methods of youth work.

62
00:09:53,477 --> 00:10:05,135
James: I think just in general and from my own experience of doing the surveys and so
forth, when you're in the middle of the storm, it's very hard to find land somewhere.

63
00:10:05,945 --> 00:10:19,341
And what's significant about the pandemic is that, that initially when we did the
first survey, which was an autumn of last year, we looked specifically at the initial
lockdown and it was to try and get some assessment of how the initial shock was.

64
00:10:20,901 --> 00:10:23,853
We did a second survey then in the beginning of this year.

65
00:10:24,603 --> 00:10:38,716
And that was to look at the full year long impact of the pandemic, because what
had happened by then and what we couldn't have known  was why there had been some
easing of lockdown and across Europe in the late summer, in October of last year.

66
00:10:39,586 --> 00:10:42,466
By the winter, most countries were back into a lockdown.

67
00:10:42,487 --> 00:10:49,700
And it's only now hopefully with the vaccination program that we may be emerging from the pandemic itself.

68
00:10:50,390 --> 00:10:57,203
Though, there's still a bit of a question mark, I think over what happens this winter, that's going to be the real test.

69
00:10:58,923 --> 00:11:09,038
From our own research  on the surveys and so forth, there is a, I think a lot of people
feel we're too close to the storm, really to get a clear picture of what it's like.

70
00:11:09,458 --> 00:11:14,408
So therefore trying to do research now is going to face a lot of handicaps.

71
00:11:14,858 --> 00:11:20,078
Having said that some countries have undertaken a fair amount of research already.

72
00:11:20,648 --> 00:11:24,107
So I think there's a kind of a half and half situation at the moment.

73
00:11:24,932 --> 00:11:35,927
But I think certainly going forward that there are two areas in particular, which are
going to be very important in terms of research, but these, they pose particular problems.

74
00:11:36,437 --> 00:11:49,864
I mean, one of the big issues that's emerged from the pandemic and it's no great surprise with this issue
of mental health of young people and the stress and the anxiety they've gone over the past two years.

75
00:11:49,951 --> 00:11:56,114
Now somebody might make the not unreasonable argument that this is a temporary, so to speak.

76
00:11:56,114 --> 00:12:17,565
And that once the cause of stress and strain is removed, which is the pandemic then you
won't have such stress and strain on young people anymore, but I think what the pandemic has
highlighted that is highlighted this issue of mental health and wellbeing among young people,
which has always been an issue, but which perhaps hasn't got the kind of focus that is required.

77
00:12:18,675 --> 00:12:33,905
On the digital front we have unique opportunity now that we won't, I think have again, because as
Irina was saying during the pandemic because of social distancing and indeed  socialized isolation.

78
00:12:34,930 --> 00:12:43,150
And the only thing that was available for communication, for information for youth work was true digital means.

79
00:12:43,870 --> 00:12:51,700
Now up until then digitalization had been a feature of the youth
sector, but during the pandemic, it became the only show in town.

80
00:12:52,420 --> 00:13:10,958
So I think that going forward, we need to use this window when digitalization was the only
form of youth work, youth service, youth information, and examine it a much more closely to
try and learn how well prepared was the sector for digitalization, did they have the capacity?

81
00:13:11,218 --> 00:13:13,868
Did they have the training and how do they use it?

82
00:13:14,378 --> 00:13:17,348
Did they open up new ways of doing youth work and so forth?

83
00:13:17,348 --> 00:13:21,218
So I think that's going to be a particular area for research going forward.

84
00:13:21,608 --> 00:13:21,908
Thank you.

85
00:13:23,538 --> 00:13:30,227
Irina: If I may add two things, and I would say I can be responsible for optimism in this podcast.

86
00:13:31,597 --> 00:13:42,647
The things that we noticed being done by the youth sector and young people sometimes
organizing by themselves during the pandemic are going in different directions.

87
00:13:42,647 --> 00:13:45,785
But two are the main ones that we observed.

88
00:13:46,835 --> 00:13:49,965
The first one it's intergenerational solidarity.

89
00:13:50,955 --> 00:14:07,266
And I think that we can go into looking more in-depth into this theme and encouraging more youth sector
to work on this, taking into account how the impact of COVID was generally impacting the societies.

90
00:14:07,266 --> 00:14:17,131
And the second one, bigger attention to how information is delivered to young people,
because misinformation and fake news have been an important feature of the pandemic.

91
00:14:17,178 --> 00:14:33,049
Then, youth organizations and youth workers, and groups of young people organizing
themselves to provide information and to ensure correct true flow of information
between authorities and trustable sources of information towards the young people.

92
00:14:33,169 --> 00:14:43,488
This is also something that happened and can be used as good practices
to share and case studies for research to see how it can be developed.

93
00:14:45,205 --> 00:14:49,525
Lana: Just to follow on both Irina's and Jim's argument.

94
00:14:49,639 --> 00:15:01,011
I think we have seen through this research that during the pandemic youth sector
and young people have proven to be adaptable, resilient, flexible, innovative.

95
00:15:01,082 --> 00:15:09,724
But also we have seen that in order to continue to do so youth sector still needs to be supported by the policy.

96
00:15:09,784 --> 00:15:17,072
And, we have seen that there are areas which particularly need support.

97
00:15:17,102 --> 00:15:20,972
Young people's mental health and wellbeing has been impacted.

98
00:15:20,972 --> 00:15:30,259
The research clearly shows that, and we are doing more investigation in this,
through the survey to EKIP and PEYR, but also through additional desk research.

99
00:15:31,194 --> 00:15:51,719
But we have also seen that young people's social rights have been impacted, not only through the fact that young
people have been particularly affected when it comes to employment, but this has also had an effect then on young
people's housing, for example, and the ability to be independent and to, to transition to autonomous living.

100
00:15:51,834 --> 00:16:08,511
Digitalization has certainly helped youth sector to thrive during this time to be able
to conduct the activities, but this is also something that we are seeing that youth
work, as Irina said, has been quite used to conducting activities in a certain way.

101
00:16:09,411 --> 00:16:24,050
And while there has been innovation, adaptation, there are still things that we clearly know can't be done
online and that we still are very much in need of face-to-face activities to be able to really conduct our work.

102
00:16:24,060 --> 00:16:32,135
In terms of the gaps, as Jim mentioned, there's still more to be seen, particularly in terms of long-term effect.

103
00:16:32,215 --> 00:16:41,449
I think when it comes to mental health, we also have the issue of PTSD that will
be coming up after the pandemic, that is still too early to research at this stage.

104
00:16:42,448 --> 00:16:43,258
Dariusz: Thank you, Lana for this.

105
00:16:43,279 --> 00:16:46,691
Yes, youth work adapted, was resilient and flexible.

106
00:16:47,906 --> 00:16:51,828
In many instances, youth policy was not, which is also coming from the research.

107
00:16:51,978 --> 00:17:00,989
The response came quite late, sometimes or it never happened actually in
case of small organizations  that  were not actually able to function.

108
00:17:01,049 --> 00:17:12,574
And also when we look at the European youth strategies, which we have
discussed in the last episode, they also were created in the  pre- COVID times.

109
00:17:12,844 --> 00:17:15,461
So they also don't include a lot of aspects.

110
00:17:15,461 --> 00:17:24,648
Though,  there is a very strong response from the European Youth Work Convention
that actually highlighted all the issues that came about in the times of COVID.

111
00:17:24,948 --> 00:17:25,278
Okay.

112
00:17:25,308 --> 00:17:40,841
I understand that it's still important   to have this knowledge hub, and it's still
developing, as you said, there is a lot of gaps hopefully going to be filled in the next
year, and there is a new questionnaire that  was already sent to EKIP and PEYR members.

113
00:17:41,141 --> 00:17:44,141
If we can talk about it a little bit now.

114
00:17:44,891 --> 00:17:48,911
How does it differ from the previous surveys?

115
00:17:49,371 --> 00:17:50,621
What is its focus?

116
00:17:50,621 --> 00:17:58,571
And when we can expect the results of maybe even get a little bit of a taste
of the results, because I know that they are collected, but not analyzed yet.

117
00:17:59,621 --> 00:18:02,471
James, if I can ask you to talk about it a bit.

118
00:18:03,648 --> 00:18:04,158
James: Thank you.

119
00:18:04,578 --> 00:18:08,919
Yes, I've been involved in the three surveys that have been conducted to date.

120
00:18:09,319 --> 00:18:22,911
The first one was done in the autumn of last year and its purpose really was to try and grasp the initial impact,
particularly the lockdown, the initial lockdown, which went from mid-March to, shall we say, late June across Europe.

121
00:18:23,841 --> 00:18:32,796
We then did a second survey earlier this year, which looked at the full year long impact of all of the actual pandemic.

122
00:18:33,336 --> 00:18:44,046
Now, both of these surveys were broadly similar in approach because they were trying to
look at the impact, not just the impact of the pandemic, but also the response to it.

123
00:18:44,766 --> 00:18:47,736
And  in general, they focused in on a number of key areas.

124
00:18:47,856 --> 00:18:49,926
First of all, there was the issue of communication.

125
00:18:50,766 --> 00:18:55,206
How were you and young people communicated with during the pandemic itself?

126
00:18:56,226 --> 00:19:05,886
We then looked at how, what the impact was on, on the lives of young people
and how they responded, how it impacted on youth workers and so forth.

127
00:19:06,456 --> 00:19:19,389
Then we looked at the role of the state, however, that manifests itself, whether it's at a national
level or regional level, local level, but how did the public respond to the impact of the pandemic.

128
00:19:19,809 --> 00:19:29,349
And we also then looked at how the voluntary sector responded
to the pandemic and the impact that it had on NGOs and so forth.

129
00:19:30,829 --> 00:19:36,699
The second survey, more or less reflected what we learned from the first survey.

130
00:19:36,716 --> 00:19:53,006
There were a number I think, of important issues that came out of that and some of those had
to do with the whole issue of communication, and how the communication was handled during
the pandemic, but also what the communication or lack of communication actually revealed.

131
00:19:53,746 --> 00:20:04,196
The other thing that came out of that, I think was that the pandemic tended
to exacerbate problems and issues that we've known about for a long time.

132
00:20:04,916 --> 00:20:28,466
And one of the most striking things that emerged from it was that those countries which have well
established or / and well supported youth sector, where the state, for instance, at whatever level national,
regional, local supports young people, youth organizations, invest, has coherent policies and so forth.

133
00:20:29,276 --> 00:20:47,797
Those countries, they experience difficulties, but by and large, they survived so
to speak what was not the case or was much less the case  where those areas and
those countries in Europe, which are largely reliant on NGOs and on project funding.

134
00:20:48,487 --> 00:20:51,490
These are the countries and the organizations that were really hit.

135
00:20:52,150 --> 00:21:05,160
Now that the problem I think, was not so much that there were cuts in allocations,  cuts in funding per se,
because by the time the pandemic it impacted in March last year, most funding tends to be allocated anywhere.

136
00:21:05,850 --> 00:21:11,370
The problem was not, shall we say at the supply end, it was at the demand end.

137
00:21:12,150 --> 00:21:26,330
People had difficulty in expending money and this and that made projects and NGOs particularly vulnerable because they
could either get money or if they got money, they couldn't use it because project funding  it tends to be focused.

138
00:21:26,660 --> 00:21:30,050
So I think that was, there were two big issues which came out of it.

139
00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:38,075
The other issues that emerged with the issue of mental health,
which I've mentioned before, and also the issue to digitalization.

140
00:21:38,915 --> 00:21:44,645
Now in the most recent survey, which we did during the autumn, and we've only begun to analyze it.

141
00:21:44,915 --> 00:21:47,479
We focused really on 3 areas, so to speak.

142
00:21:47,749 --> 00:21:52,234
First of all, was the impact of mental health and the problems around that.

143
00:21:53,044 --> 00:22:02,107
And the other one was on digitalization to try and explore more
how digitalization operated, functioned  during the pandemic.

144
00:22:02,887 --> 00:22:12,547
And we also have a section which really is looking forward and it addresses the
issue of the recovery plan, which again has significant policy implications.

145
00:22:12,867 --> 00:22:15,747
How was this recovery money going to be expended?

146
00:22:16,227 --> 00:22:22,653
To what extent will the youth sector actually get some of this money
and then when it gets the money, what is it going to do with it?

147
00:22:23,223 --> 00:22:37,481
So in a sense, this final survey will look back at the two previous surveys, try
and highlight the big issues that emerge, and also look forward as to how some
of these issues might be addressed in terms of policy developments in the future.

148
00:22:39,531 --> 00:22:45,381
Lana: So, as Jim said, the survey that we did now focuses on  specific  themes and topics.

149
00:22:45,381 --> 00:22:57,521
And also the briefings that we did recently, especially the last three are also focused
on impact of COVID either in specific areas or on specific groups of young people.

150
00:22:58,001 --> 00:23:03,881
This is the direction that we will be taking in our following briefings and research on the impact of COVID.

151
00:23:03,911 --> 00:23:15,166
So for example, our latest briefing looks at the impact of the pandemic on the NEET,
so young people that are not in employment, education or training in rural areas.

152
00:23:15,556 --> 00:23:25,379
So we are really looking at some very specific cases where the impact of pandemic
might have been greater than on the overall or average population of young people.

153
00:23:25,649 --> 00:23:32,569
We'll also be exploring the impact of the pandemic in two regions that are of the interest of the partnership.

154
00:23:32,599 --> 00:23:40,574
And this research is now ongoing, because we have seen that,
perhaps the data might not be there or is collected differently.

155
00:23:40,964 --> 00:23:45,974
And as Jim also mentioned the policy responses in different countries were quite different.

156
00:23:46,694 --> 00:23:52,723
And we will also be looking at the impact of the pandemic on the access to youth services.

157
00:23:53,023 --> 00:24:00,509
So there is more coming, stay tuned to the hub and we look forward to sharing the findings with the youth sector.

158
00:24:02,036 --> 00:24:03,796
Dariusz: Thank you Irina and thank you James.

159
00:24:03,856 --> 00:24:08,329
Thank you, Lana, for telling us what's coming next in the hub.

160
00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:22,716
There is already, as I said, a lot of material and also a lot of topics that we have mentioned
here, like such as homelessness  of young people, there is a lot of material on social
inclusion of young people, which we also tackled in some of the episodes of our podcast.

161
00:24:22,746 --> 00:24:31,481
So please go to the hub and useit, because it's there actually
to support youth work, youth policy and young people in the end.

162
00:24:31,781 --> 00:24:32,441
Thank you.

163
00:24:32,441 --> 00:24:33,401
And goodbye.