Transnational Convergence on Youth, Solidarity and Empowerment: An Experience of Youth Knowledge Mobilisation
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Abstract
This document presents a narrative case study that analyses the exchange and mobilisation of knowledge generated in the encounter between a Spanish Research, Development and Innovation (R&D&I) project (HEBE project) and the European Project for Youth Participation (EPYP), where partner organisations from France, Portugal and Spain worked together to strengthen participation for youth with fewer opportunities in the field of international solidarity. The outcome of this encounter is a socio-educational diagnostic tool for youth organisations and educators in diverse educational and community contexts. This diagnostic tool was itself a further development of the HEBE project’s rubric, an analytical tool based on nine dimensions of youth empowerment. The results from the international encounter show that knowledge transfer is not a one-way process but rather a collective construction in which each agent (researchers, educators and young people) contributes their knowledge, contexts and languages. Finally, this project also shows that when young people are empowered through participatory spaces and their decisions are recognised and integrated into collective processes, they can make a difference in research from its first stages.
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