ამბრელა/Umbrella
Tbilisi, Lagurashvili st. 4, 0178 Tbilisi, Georgia
Concrete tool
The aim of Gamifyouthwork was to strengthen youth participation in local youth organisations, particularly in rural and less-served communities where engagement opportunities are often limited. We wanted to create a system that motivates young people to participate more actively in youth activities, community initiatives, and learning processes.
Another important goal was to introduce a fair and transparent way of recognising participation. In many youth organisations, selecting participants for trainings, exchanges, or leadership opportunities can sometimes feel subjective. Through this initiative, we wanted to develop a model that acknowledges young people’s engagement based on their real involvement and contributions.
The practice also aimed to make youth participation more visible, motivating, and structured for both young people and youth workers. By introducing a gamified approach, we wanted to encourage behaviours such as regular attendance, active contribution to activities, teamwork, transperancy inside the organisation and community engagement.
Finally, the broader purpose of the initiative was to develop an innovative and adaptable participation model that could later be used by other youth organisations and municipalities to strengthen youth engagement and democratic participation in local communities.
Gamifyouthwork is a digital youth participation practice (website: Gamifyouthwork.org) developed in Gori, Georgia (small city in Georgia), to motivate young people to engage more actively in youth activities and community initiatives. The practice is based on a gamified participation system where young people collect points for their involvement in different activities within youth centres or youth projects.
The digital tool gamifyouthwork.org was created together with partner organisations from Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The tool was designed based on the real needs of youth workers and youth organisations and tested with 150 local young people from the participating countries.
The website is available free of charge for any youth organisations from Europe. The organisations need to create their own account, add their projects, asign the youth workers/project managers and invite the participants to connect with the project.
Afterwards, the youth workers can add the agenda of their activity and customise the tasks they want to promote among participants.
In practice, the platform includes several features that support the learning and participation process:
1. Activities can be tracked through QR code check-ins, allowing youth workers to easily monitor attendance and punctuality.
2. The system also allows facilitators to create quizzes to reflect on learning outcomes and measure knowledge gained during activities.
3. Youth workers can assign tasks or challenges that encourage participants to contribute actively to projects or community initiatives.
4. The tool includes peer recognition and voting elements, allowing participants to acknowledge the contributions of others.
5. Sessions agenda and leaderboard of the participants who are collecting the points are easily available and accessible to participants.
The system also recognises the work of youth workers, as points can be connected to the engagement of their youth groups. This helps organisations better understand participation dynamics and encourages facilitators to support active youth involvement.
The practice is flexible and can be adapted to different youth work contexts, including local youth centres, youth projects, or educational activities, making it a practical tool for organisations working with young people in various community settings.
The mobile application of the gamification website is also in a preparation phase.
The implementation of Gamifyouthwork has had several positive effects on youth participation and the way youth activities are organised in our local context. One of the most visible changes was an increase in motivation among young people to attend activities regularly and participate more actively. The gamified system created a sense of recognition and friendly competition, which encouraged participants to contribute more during meetings, discussions, and community initiatives.
Young people also became more proactive in proposing and implementing small local actions. For example, during one environmental initiative, a group of participants organised a local action and collected around 200 kg of plastic waste in a single day in order to gain points and qualify for a national training opportunity. This demonstrated how the system can motivate young people to take initiative and engage with issues affecting their local community.
For youth workers, the practice created a more transparent and structured way to monitor participation. Instead of relying only on personal impressions, facilitators could track engagement through concrete actions and participation points. This made it easier to recognise active participants and involve them in further opportunities such as training, exchanges, or leadership roles.
The practice also strengthened group dynamics and cooperation. Young people started encouraging each other to participate in activities, complete tasks, and contribute ideas, creating a more active and supportive youth community.
Overall, the practice helped create a more engaging and participatory environment in youth activities and showed how simple gamification elements can motivate young people to become more involved in their local community and youth work initiatives.
Youth workers