A project that produces excellent resources but keeps them behind paywalls, limits them to the languages of its immediate partners, or makes them available only for the duration of its funding period has not really done its job. The knowledge exists – but it does not travel. The work was done – but its reach stops at the project boundary.
From the beginning, CB4leisureYwD was designed to avoid this. Every resource developed through the project – the manual for youth workers, the toolkits, the online courses, the curriculum, the collection of positive practices – is published digitally, made freely available, and translated into all five languages of the partnership: English, Bosnian, Serbian, Albanian and Italian.
These are not just logistical decisions. They reflect a set of values about what this kind of work is for.
Making resources digital means they are accessible from anywhere – from a youth organisation in a small town with no budget for printed materials, from a youth worker at home preparing for next week’s session, from a researcher in another country looking for examples of practice. It also means they can be updated as the field evolves, rather than becoming outdated the moment they are printed.
Making them free means removing a barrier that, in the context of civil society organisations and youth work – sectors that are chronically underfunded across all four partner countries – is a very real one. If the resources cost money to access, many of the organisations and individuals who would benefit most from them will simply not access them.
Making them available in multiple languages means meeting people where they are. Not everyone who works with young people with disabilities in the Western Balkans or in Italy reads English comfortably. Producing resources only in English would exclude a significant proportion of the people they are intended to reach.
The project website, which hosts all of these resources, is designed to remain active and accessible long after the project itself concludes. The goal is not a temporary intervention, but a lasting contribution to the field – a set of tools that organisations and youth workers can find, use and build on for years to come.