Solvers Next Gen is an Erasmus+ project designed to boost youth civic engagement, strengthen digital and leadership skills, and create meaningful connections between young people, youth workers, and European institutions. Led by Sport Education Academy (Spain) in cooperation with Enjoy Sicily (Italy), the project brings together organisations, educators, and young participants in an innovative learning journey.
At the heart of the project is a simple idea: when young people understand how the European Union works and how its policies impact their towns, schools and neighbourhoods, they become more motivated to participate, to ask questions and to contribute to public life. To achieve this, Solvers Next Gen combines non-formal learning, investigative journalism, digital storytelling and peer-to-peer education in a practical and inclusive format that allows participants to learn by doing.
The project begins with a training phase dedicated to educators, trainers and youth workers. Through a series of online webinars, they explore participatory methodologies such as Challenge-Based Learning, Design Thinking and peer-led facilitation. These tools help them create more engaging, accessible learning environments for young people, especially those with fewer opportunities or limited access to civic participation. Strengthening the skills of these professionals is a key step to ensuring long-term impact and better support for local youth.
The central part of Solvers Next Gen is an international competition in which young participants work in teams to investigate a European-funded initiative or policy that affects their community. They learn the basics of journalistic research, collect information, interview stakeholders and finally create a communication campaign to share their findings. This process allows them not only to understand Europe in a tangible way, but also to develop essential soft skills such as teamwork, creativity, leadership and digital communication. At the end of the competition, the teams present their work online in front of educators, institutions and local organisations, and the two best-ranked groups will travel to Brussels to present their conclusions.
The Brussels visit is a highlight of the project: young people meet European representatives, exchange ideas with networks such as Eurodesk, and present their “Green Book”, a collection of proposals they believe the EU should prioritise. This moment turns their months of work into a real experience of dialogue with decision-makers, empowering them to see themselves as active citizens with something valuable to contribute.
Solvers Next Gen is not only a youth competition; it is a wider strategy to build stronger connections between organisations, institutions and communities. Throughout the project, partners create local and national networks, organise dissemination events, and encourage other organisations to use the project’s open resources, including the training webinars and the practical manual developed for educators.
By the end of the project, we aim to have more confident youth workers, more engaged young people and more connected communities. Solvers Next Gen ultimately wants to show that civic participation can be accessible, creative and meaningful, and that young people – when given the right tools – can become powerful ambassadors of European values and active contributors to their local future.
