🇮🇹 "Youth Leaders on Air" / 27.10-04.11.2025 - Furnari (ME), Sicily, Italy / 2025-1-IT03-KA153-YOU-000298727 🎙️
- Be The Change Italy
- Aug 13, 2025
- 15 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
🇪🇺 A KA153 Erasmus+ Project
Youth Leaders on Air was implemented within the Erasmus+ Programme as a KA153-YOU project, the Key Action dedicated to youth workers. The project brought together youth workers and young leaders in Furnari, Sicily, to strengthen leadership, podcasting, storytelling and digital youth work through non-formal education.
Project code: 2025-1-IT03-KA153-YOU-000298727
Official Erasmus+ project postcard:
Late October in Furnari had its own rhythm: the sea nearby, the working room slowly filling with voices, cables, phones, microphones, notebooks, laughter, and the small uncertainty that always comes at the beginning of an international project. From 27 October to 4 November 2025, that rhythm became "Youth Leaders on Air", an Erasmus+ training course where leadership was not treated as a title, but as a voice to discover, practice, record, edit, and share.
For one week, 28 youth workers and young leaders from Italy, France, Spain, Türkiye, North Macedonia, Austria and Greece came together in Sicily with a shared challenge: how can youth work give more space to young people's voices? How can podcasting and digital storytelling become tools for participation, inclusion and community building? And how can leadership become less about speaking over others, and more about listening well enough to help others speak?
"Youth Leaders on Air" was built around a simple but powerful idea: when young people learn how to structure a message, use their voice, collaborate across cultures and publish meaningful content, they do not only gain technical skills. They also gain confidence, responsibility and a clearer sense of how they can contribute to their communities.
The project was hosted by Be The Change in Furnari, with partner organisations from six other countries. The common learning path combined leadership, public speaking, storytelling, podcasting, digital media production, intercultural learning, Youthpass reflection and dissemination. It was practical, emotional, sometimes technically messy, and deeply human.
Throughout the week, the group explored questions like:
How can youth workers use podcasts to open conversations about real social issues?
How can storytelling make learning more personal, accessible and memorable?
How can leadership be practiced through listening, empathy and shared responsibility?
How can intercultural teams turn different experiences into one common message?
How can digital tools help young people move from participation to visibility?
Below is the story of how a training room in Sicily became a small international studio. Andiamo on air.
🎙️ Welcome to the Frequency
The first full day was dedicated to the most important foundation of any learning experience: trust. Before talking about microphones, editing, leadership models or final outputs, the participants needed to become a group.
The morning started with energisers and activities to learn names, notice similarities and differences, and begin interacting beyond national teams. One of the favourite early moments was a funny chair energiser that quickly broke the ice. Participants then represented themselves through drawings and personal reflections about passions, dreams, hobbies, values and places that had shaped them. It was a simple activity, but it helped everyone enter the project as a person, not only as a participant.
The group also discussed roles, duties and the qualities of the "ideal participant". Hopes, fears and contributions were shared openly: many participants arrived wanting to gain technical knowledge about podcasting, improve public speaking, and learn how to communicate better with people from different cultures. Some admitted that their social battery was low at the start, but the welcoming atmosphere made the first step easier.
A small but important ritual also began: personal envelopes and the "secret friend" activity. Throughout the week, anonymous messages and small gestures created a quiet layer of care inside the group. The day ended with speed dating, the official opening of the training course, an Italian welcome evening and karaoke. By the end of the first day, strangers had already started becoming a temporary community.
🧭 From leadership theory to leadership in practice
Leadership was never presented as a fixed definition. Instead, participants explored it through movement, role play, theatre, reflection and daily responsibilities. On the second day, after a beach energiser and a playful competition between Team Pasta and Team Pizza, the group moved into trust-building and leadership exercises. A forest walk helped participants connect through shared movement and reflection in nature, while role-play scenarios opened discussion about real situations youth workers face: conflict, inclusion, motivation and group dynamics.
The web app created by Be The Change was introduced as a digital guide for the course. It gave participants a practical space to explore leadership, storytelling and podcasting, and to connect the training activities with the final creative outputs.
From a youth work perspective, the strongest leadership value of the web app is that it translates leadership from an abstract concept into facilitation practice. The Learn modules, AI Coach, coaching cards, conversation simulator and journal give youth workers tools to reflect on group dynamics, difficult conversations, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution and active listening. This matters because youth leadership in the field is rarely about authority; it is about creating spaces where young people can participate, disagree safely, make decisions and recognise their own capacity to act.
From the podcasting side, the app makes digital youth work concrete. The podcast guide, interactive planner, PDF export and podcast gallery help a youth worker move from an idea to a structured episode: goal, audience, format, equipment, recording and publishing. In practice, this turns podcasting into a non-formal education method: young people research issues that matter to them, negotiate roles in a team, practice public speaking and storytelling, and publish a result that can be used for local dialogue, advocacy and dissemination beyond the training room.
A collaborative storytelling exercise became one of the first moments where the group understood the power of building something together. Participants created a story one piece at a time, one person per round. Nothing was fully planned, yet a narrative appeared. The activity showed that storytelling is not only a performance skill; it is also a group process based on attention, timing, improvisation and trust.
🗣️ Public speaking: when vulnerability becomes strength
On 30 October, the public speaking session became one of the most emotionally meaningful moments of the project. Participants had prepared short speeches, but the exercise quickly went beyond technique. It became a space where people shared personal stories about resilience, identity, discrimination, illness, career choices, migration, self-acceptance, mobility and trusting the process.
Some stories spoke about economic crisis and creative problem-solving. Others touched on body image, illness, prejudice in the job market, small-town judgment, choosing a different professional path, or finding courage through Erasmus+ experiences. The room listened with unusual attention. People were not only practicing how to speak clearly; they were practicing how to be honest in front of others.
The session showed that public speaking is not only about voice projection, structure or confidence. In youth work, it is also about creating a safe enough space for stories to be shared. Vulnerability became a form of leadership: the courage to tell a true story, the responsibility to listen respectfully, and the ability to transform personal experience into learning for the group.
This moment also changed the atmosphere of the training. After hearing each other in such a personal way, the group carried more empathy into the following activities. The later podcast work benefited from this: participants had already practiced speaking from experience, listening with care, and understanding that every topic becomes stronger when it has a human voice behind it.
Participants used theatre to explore how leaders make decisions, worked on inclusion and diversity, and later entered sessions on conflict resolution, non-violent communication and emotional intelligence. The most repeated lesson was not complicated: a good leader listens before speaking.
🎧 From ideas to podcasts: the studio opens
Once the group had built trust and explored storytelling, the project moved into production. Participants started defining podcast topics, creating concepts, recording first episodes, designing logos and intros, and learning how to transform an idea into a coherent digital product.
This was the phase where creativity met real-world technical challenges. Teams worked with audio and video files, microphones, phones, storage limits, subtitles, synchronisation issues and editing software. Some participants recorded confidently from the beginning; others had to overcome the anxiety of speaking without a script. One participant later described the experience as a "new career unlocked", because recording a podcast helped him feel comfortable after initially being nervous.
The learning was not only technical. Participants had to decide who would speak, who would record, who would edit, who would structure the episode, who would manage files, and how to keep the message clear. In other words, podcasting became a practical leadership laboratory. Teams had to negotiate, divide tasks, respect deadlines, solve problems and keep supporting each other.
Canva presentations, editing sessions and peer feedback helped the groups improve their products. The process was sometimes chaotic, especially when files were too heavy, subtitles did not synchronise, or material had to be transferred between devices. But those problems became part of the learning. Youth workers rarely work in perfect conditions; the ability to adapt is part of the competence.
🌊 Cefalù on air: visibility, movement and a change of scenery
After several intense days in Furnari, the group travelled to Cefalù. The visit was more than a break from the venue: it became a visibility and content-creation activity. Each national team worked on an "I am the change" video connected to youth participation and positive impact. Participants also completed a photo challenge across different spots in the city, sharing stories and creating visual material for dissemination.
The change of scenery mattered. After days of routine, the city offered movement, colour, sea, streets, shops and new perspectives. Some participants relaxed at the beach, while a smaller group hiked up the local mountain and saw the red roofs, white sand and blue sea from above. In the daily interviews, the visit was described with strong gratitude: a refreshing moment that helped participants reconnect with the experience in a different way.
Cefalù also reminded the group that digital storytelling does not happen only inside a room. Places, landscapes, local communities and shared movement can become part of the message. The participants were not only learning how to produce content; they were learning how to observe, select, frame and communicate what an experience means.
🌍 Intercultural nights: learning through food, music and humour
Every international project has formal learning moments, but often the deepest intercultural learning happens in the evening. During "Youth Leaders on Air", intercultural nights gave participants the chance to share food, music, dances, stories and traditions from their countries.
France, North Macedonia and Türkiye opened one of the evenings with traditional food, national dances and Turkish coffee. Another evening brought Austria, Greece and Spain together through music, dances and local flavours. These moments were joyful, but they were also educational. They made diversity tangible and relaxed. Participants learned about each other not through slides alone, but through taste, rhythm, jokes and shared celebration.
The interviews from those days show how much this mattered. Participants remembered the cultural exchange, the dances, the dishes, the Turkish coffee, and the feeling of being surrounded by people who were different but increasingly familiar. Intercultural dialogue became something lived, not only discussed.
🧠 Conflict, emotion and informal learning
Some important learning also happened in sessions that did not produce a public video but shaped the way the group worked. On 31 October, the Conflict Resolution and Non-Violent Communication session helped participants connect leadership with everyday youth work: observing before reacting, naming needs, listening actively and finding language that can reduce tension instead of escalating it.
Later, Emotional Intelligence for Leaders, empowering community action and Erasmus+ opportunities helped participants move from individual experience to future practice. The question became practical: how can a youth worker use a podcast, a story, a group discussion or a local activity to help young people feel heard and involved?
The informal creative moments carried the same purpose. Halloween masks and bracelets gave the group a softer space to talk, the Erasmus advice corner turned experience into peer-to-peer guidance, and the meme-making game and movie night gave everyone a way to decompress after intense production work. On the final day, Dixit cards, personal notes, the group-photo selection and the secret friend reveal helped participants name what they were taking home before the final circle.
📢 Podcast outputs: youth issues, real voices
The final playlist was not a generic media task. It became an editorial map of the issues participants felt were urgent for young people: political manipulation, critical thinking, education, work, migration, housing, healthcare, mental health and belonging. The episodes were different in tone, language and format, but they all used podcasting as a way to turn youth workers' experiences into public conversation.
🎬 YOUTUBE PODCAST LINK
🎾 Ping-Pong Diplomacy: politics, fear and algorithms
Ping-Pong Diplomacy used the idea of a diplomatic match to discuss heavy political themes in an accessible way. In the first episode, Gabby from France and Yana from Italy explored how propaganda works through one-sided messages, emotional manipulation, fear and algorithmic amplification. The conversation moved from historical examples to today's social media environment, where AI-driven feeds can make fear travel faster than critical thinking.
The second episode continued the political thread with Alberto from Spain and Anna from Greece, focusing on the rise of far-right and fascist narratives among young people in Europe. The episode linked this trend to economic insecurity, distrust toward institutions and the way polarising content is rewarded online. It also brought the discussion back to youth work: education, humanities, history and critical thinking were presented as tools against simplified extremist narratives.
🎓 Beyond the Classroom: education and real-life skills
Beyond the Classroom compared education systems through personal and intercultural perspectives. The first episode brought together participants with roots in Morocco, Greece and Kazakhstan, who discussed youth unemployment, language barriers in higher education, free public university access and the limits of school systems based too heavily on memorisation and theory. The episode showed how education is never only national policy; it shapes confidence, mobility and access to opportunity.
Episode 1 - Education systems, unemployment, language barriers and practical skills
The second episode shifted from diagnosis to solutions. Participants proposed stronger life skills education, financial literacy, emotional management, more physical education and better links between school and practical experience through apprenticeships and internships. It was one of the clearest examples of the project goal: young people did not only name problems, they used the podcast format to imagine alternatives.
Episode 2 - Solutions for education, life skills and apprenticeships
🚗 Balkan Boys Network: unemployment, AI and migration
Balkan Boys Network brought a more casual and humorous format without losing the seriousness of the topic. Participants from North Macedonia and Greece discussed unemployment, AI replacing jobs, slow technological adaptation, migration toward Western Europe, inflation and the rising cost of living. The strength of the episode was its tone: it sounded like a conversation among friends, but underneath the humour there was a sharp reflection on why many young people feel pushed to leave their countries to search for stability.
Diving into Unemployment - AI, migration, inflation and cost of living
🏠 Special topics: housing, healthcare and mental health
Mom, I Am Not Leaving addressed the youth housing crisis through listener-style letters and real-life scenarios. Alejandro, together with participants from Spain and Greece, discussed rental scams, very small and overpriced apartments, difficulties for foreigners looking for housing, landlords refusing tenants with pets and the reality of living with parents longer than expected. The episode turned a daily struggle into a shared European conversation.
Mom, I Am Not Leaving - Youth housing crisis
Healthcare Systems in Türkiye, recorded in Turkish, focused on inequalities between public and private healthcare. The participants discussed long waiting times, expensive private care, access to treatment, mental health support and elderly care. Its value inside the project was also linguistic and cultural: it showed that youth voice can be expressed in different languages while still contributing to a common European discussion.
Healthcare Systems in Türkiye - Public/private healthcare inequalities
Chill Bro - Mental Health, recorded in Spanish, connected nutrition, gut health, anxiety, empathy and education. With Raquel bringing her perspective as a nutritionist and José as a university professor, the episode linked mental well-being to daily habits and educational environments. It also showed how podcasting can make specialist knowledge feel closer and more human.
Chill Bro - Mental Health, nutrition, anxiety, empathy and education
💬 Testimonials: the learning behind the outputs
The two testimonial videos are part of the result because they document what happened behind the final products. Georgia, Alejandro and Ceren spoke about hands-on leadership, teamwork, the balance between hard work and fun, and the courage to step outside the comfort zone. Eirini, Wassim and Elisavet described the safe, non-judgmental environment created during the project and summarised the experience through connection, youth and discovery.
Testimonial 1 - Leadership, teamwork and comfort zone
Testimonial 2 - Safe environment, connection, youth and discovery
Taken together, the playlist shows the project result in a concrete way. The participants did not only talk about youth participation; they practiced it. They chose topics, built conversations, recorded their voices, edited material and published content that can continue travelling after the mobility. The final episodes also show the diversity of the group: different languages, formats, tones and national perspectives became one shared archive of youth voices.
🌱 Learning, Youthpass and the final circle
The last part of the project slowed the rhythm down. After production days, participants needed time to understand what they had actually learned. The final day included evaluation, a learning map, Youthpass preparation, personal messages, a gratitude circle, the secret friend reveal and the collective viewing of the podcast videos.
Participants reflected on competences that are essential for youth work: facilitating learning, designing programmes, managing resources, collaborating in teams, communicating meaningfully, displaying intercultural sensitivity, networking, evaluating and being civically engaged. The Youthpass process helped connect concrete activities to these competences. Recording a podcast became communication and resource management. Solving file problems became teamwork and adaptability. Sharing a personal speech became confidence, empathy and active listening. Participating in intercultural nights became cultural awareness.
The official participant reports confirmed the positive impact. All 28 participants reported that they benefited from the Erasmus+ learning mobility. All 28 reported an increased European sense of belonging and improved language skills. All 28 reported learning new and useful ways to apply digital technology, and all 28 reported improving organisational, management and leadership skills. Almost all participants said they would recommend the experience to a colleague.
Numbers cannot capture every moment, but they help confirm what the daily reflections already showed: the project gave participants practical tools and a stronger sense of confidence, belonging and professional direction.
🚀 Dissemination: the microphones kept travelling
"Youth Leaders on Air" did not end when participants left Sicily. After the mobility, the results continued travelling through social media posts, partner presentations, online meetings, individual testimonies and local follow-up workshops organised in each partner country.
The project collected a wide range of social media content from participants and teams across the seven countries, mainly on Instagram and LinkedIn. These posts helped share the experience with peers, local communities and professional networks. They also made the Erasmus+ programme visible through personal storytelling: not only as an institutional opportunity, but as something young people and youth workers had actually lived, shaped and brought back home.
Online disseminations session took place on December 2025 involving more then 50 participants. MED13 presented online the training course objectives, photos and videos, examples of final podcast projects, overview on the Web App / ToolKit Erasmus+ opportunities and the value of non-formal education. Level Up prepared a dissemination presentation and video about Erasmus+, intercultural exchange, leadership, podcasting, inclusion and youth empowerment. Strong Future Association team presented the project online with slides about the activities, podcasts and group experience. A La Mua contributed with an individual video testimony, while Austria provided an audio follow-up. Together with the social media actions from Italy, Greece and the other national teams, these activities helped keep the project alive beyond the training room.
The follow-up was not limited to showing photos or saying that the experience had been beautiful. In each country, the partner teams worked on the practical transfer of what had been learned in Sicily. The local workshops focused on how technical audio skills can improve media production inside youth organisations: choosing the right recording space, using microphones and phones more intentionally, checking sound levels, organising files, recording interviews, editing basic audio, preparing short video or podcast outputs, and turning raw material into content that can be shared with a community. For many organisations, this was directly connected to their everyday workflow: documenting activities better, communicating projects more clearly, producing testimonies, and giving young people a stronger role in the creation of media content.
The workshops also brought the leadership part of the project back into organisational life. Participants shared methods for leading a team towards common goals: dividing roles, setting a clear message, planning production steps, managing deadlines, listening to different ideas, solving technical problems together and keeping the group focused on the purpose of the organisation. Podcasting became a practical example of team leadership. A good episode needs a shared objective, a structure, trust between speakers, someone taking care of recording, someone checking the message, someone editing, and everyone understanding why the content matters.
This follow-up matters because the project was designed for youth workers. The real multiplier effect is not only the content published online, but what trained youth workers do afterwards: using podcasts with young people, opening discussions on social issues, applying non-formal methods, creating inclusive spaces, improving internal communication, and encouraging participation in their own organisations and territories.
✨ What remains after the microphones are off
By the end of the week, "Youth Leaders on Air" had produced visible results: a digital web app, a photo album, daily interviews, podcast episodes, testimonial videos, Youthpass reflections, social media posts, dissemination activities and follow-up workshops in the partner countries. But the less visible results may be the most important ones.
Participants left with more confidence to speak, more tools to facilitate, more awareness of how leadership works in real groups, and a clearer understanding of how digital media can support youth participation. They learned that a podcast is not just a file to upload. It can be a space for dialogue. A microphone can become an invitation. Editing can become teamwork. A recording session can become a lesson in coordination, patience and shared responsibility. A personal story can become a bridge.
For the organisations involved, the project also left a concrete working method. Technical audio was no longer seen only as a media skill, but as part of youth work quality: a way to document impact, collect youth voices, prepare campaigns, create educational content and make local activities more visible. Leadership was no longer only a topic discussed during a session, but something practiced through production: clarifying goals, supporting team members, making decisions, solving problems and helping everyone contribute to a common result.
🤝 Partners & acknowledgements
Youth Leaders on Air was made possible through a European partnership coordinated by Be The Change in Italy and built together with organisations that brought participants, local experience, youth work practice and dissemination energy from their countries.
Hosting organisation
🇮🇹 Be The Change - Italy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethechange_it/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BeTheChangeNGO
Partner organisations
🇪🇸 Asociación Sociocultural y Musical A La Mua - Spain
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alamua_projects/
🇫🇷 Association MED13 - France
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/med13_ngo/
🇹🇷 Güçlü Gelecek Derneği / Strong Future Association - Türkiye
🇲🇰 Association for innovation, development and consultation 'Level Up international' Kadino Ilinden - North Macedonia
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ngo.levelup/
🇦🇹 TA - Training Association for Personal Development, Cooperation Competencies, and Continuing Education - Austria
🇬🇷 YouthPath - Greece
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthpathgr/
A warm thank you goes to all the organisations, participants and youth workers who helped turn this training course into a shared space for voice, creativity and European cooperation.
Comments