Open Call: Looking for Authors for content creation on Digital Transformation topics for Participation Resource Pool

SALTO Participation & Information Resource Centre (SALTO PI) is launching a new topic: Digital Transformation in Participation Resource Pool and is looking for Authors to create content and do peer-reviewing for the Participation Resource Pool. We are looking for 5 Experts to work with in 2021.

The Participation Resource Pool focuses on 4 key topics:

• Youth Participation – topics like young people and elections, new trends on youth participation, explaining what youth participation is, etc.
• Promotion & Outreach covers topics such as successful outreach strategies and practices, communication management, efficient ways to communicate with target audiences and relevant stakeholders, etc. The aim is to give youth sector actors tools to better communicate their initiatives and to help improve the quality of youth projects and activities engaging young people.
• Media, Information & Critical thinking (MIL) cover topics such as definition of MIL, gender and media, sextortion, hate-speech, radicalisation online, social media, journalism, etc). We see that Media and Information Literacy is an essential basis for quality civic participation and fundamental for democratic values. Hence it’s very important to give the youth field actors and young people quality information and tools to be able to understand, analyze and create/use media and information.
• Digital Transformation is a new topic for SALTO PI and it’s strongly connected to the launch of the new EU Youth Programme Guides (Erasmus+ and ESC). In the European youth field, Digital transformation is understood as a multi- stakeholder and inclusive process encompassing the co-design, implementation and utilisation of people-centred digital technologies with and by young people, youth workers and other relevant stakeholders. The different aspects of Digital Transformation that we focus on (this year) are:
  1. Multistakeholderism & Participation
     • Digital Governance
     • Digital Inclusion
     • Civic Tech
     • Policy Development
     • Participatory Digital Transformation (including Participatory Design)
     • Societal change & automatisation
  2. Education
     • Digital Citizenship
     • Digital Competencies
     • Digital Transformation & Youth Work (incl. Smart Youth Work and Digital Youth Work)
     • Virtual and Blended Mobility
     • 21st Century Pedagogies & Methodologies
     • EdTech
  3. Emerging Technologies
     • IoT
     • AI and algorithms
     • Robotics
     • Virtual Reality
     • Smart Cities and Communities
     • NextGen Internet  ( 5G etc.)
  4. Sustainability
     • Sustainable Digitalisation
     • Digital Transformation & Climate Change
  5. Digital Rights

Remuneration per expert: 160 € per curator per written article and one reviewed article.

Task 1: Writing a short article

Creative brief:

• General scope: What is the chosen topic? How does it connect to its subtopics? How does it connect to young people? How does it connect to youth workers? What can illustrate the reality/trends/problems/solutions of the chosen topic? What are the main challenges in this area?
• Audience: youth workers, youth organisations, stakeholders, young people, youth representatives, youth researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders in the field.
• Approach: informative, easy to read, interlinked, yet conversational, thought-provoking, engaging, and jargon-free. We are looking for people who can express themselves in a simple and “popular science” style and are at this point not looking for academic contributions.
• Planned outputs / results: Target group will have a good understanding of what the topic is and how it is connected to young people and youth work.
• Article length: Approx. 2000 characters with spaces.
• Format: Informative and descriptive article that explores the topic generally and connected to youth work and/or EU Youth Programmes. It is recommended to include findings from research, stories about project examples and case studies where relevant.
• Keywords: youth friendly, easy to read, practical, facts checked, based on reliable information, educational, inspirational.
• Visuals/photos: The author should also find photos to illustrate the articles. The author should make sure that he/she has the right to use the photos. Requirements for photos can be found here. Fotobanks can be used to find suitable illustrative photos or visuals for the article. In case getting photos is not possible, the author should inform SALTO PI.
• Guidelines: Each author is expected to follow the guidelines for contributors.

Task 2: Peer-review

This task is about cooperating with other contributing authors as a reviewer. Each author helps to edit and improve as many articles as she/he creates (based on their expertise and agreement with SALTO PI). This means commenting and adding specifications, bringing attention to weak or controversial content, helping to bring in his/her additional knowledge on this topic to give each article more expertise. A separate proofreading will be procured by SALTO PI.

Expectations to the Author:

• Have at least 5 years of experience and good expertise on at least two of the topics related to digital transformation (Multistakeholderism & Participation, Education, Emerging Technologies, Sustainability, Digital Rights)
• Be in charge and complete the Digital Transformation articles in time in a quality way
• Experience with youth work and/or EU Youth Programmes (Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps)
• High quality written expression in English
• Excellent skills in analysing and synthesising content
• Great skills in storytelling, being able to share expertise in the popular-science format
• Independent working style, responsible and cooperative approach
• Appreciation of deadlines and agreements

Payment and working conditions:

• 160€ lump sum fee per 1 written and reviewed article based on the estimated working time of 0,5 days per short article and a daily rate of 320€ per working day (excluding VAT). Each expert is expected to write about 1 topic – the amount of articles in each topic varies.

1. Multistakeholderism & Participation (7 short articles)
2. Education (7 short articles)
3. Emerging Technologies (7 short articles)
4. Sustainability (3 short articles)
5. Digital Rights (1 short article)

• Work deadline: The final deadline of presenting the articles to SALTO PI will be agreed upon mutually, latest by the end of October 2021.
• The experts will cooperate with other experts regarding topics and expertise they share (comment, give feedback and suggest improvements, etc). We work in collaboration in Google Docs.
• In case mutually agreed upon in a written form, SALTO PI and the expert can raise the workload with the same conditions (payment for articles remain the same) to generate more content if need arises.
• SALTO PI will organise proofreading

Application and selection:

Please send following documents to participation@salto-youth.net by 21 September 2021 14:00 CET with “Author on Digital Transformation” in the headline:

1. CV
2. Some examples of published content creation (articles, videos, etc) in English
3. Short application letter indicating the topic(s) you would like to contribute in and why. Please indicate which would be your first choice.

SALTO PI will make a decision per each topic, keeping diversity of expertise in mind and to guarantee all five priorities get professionally covered. SALTO PI will inform all applicants about the decision by 28th of September 2021. SALTO PI will retain rights to order more articles in case the same topic is explored from different angles.

Please specify whether you are submitting an application as a legal person (with the ability to invoice us) or a private person (with the need to sign a contract).

Selection process:

The submitted offers will be evaluated by 2 SALTO PI team members in two categories: Experience in working with similar topics (CV, examples of previous work) and application letter. Experience in working with similar topics (CV, examples of previous work) category will have a 60% weight on the total score and application letter category will have a 40% weight on the total score.

Each category will be evaluated on a 1-10 point scale by each evaluator based on how well the documents showcase how well the professional experience matches the topic(s), experience with writing (in a popular science format), experience with youth work and/or EU Youth Programmes, as described above.

The offer with the highest total score across evaluation categories will win the procurement.

SALTO-YOUTH is a network of seven Resource Centres working on European priority areas within the youth field. SALTO-YOUTH is established by the European Commission to provide non-formal learning resources for the youth field and organises training and contact-making activities to support organisations and National Agencies of Erasmus+: Youth in Action (NAs) within the frame of the European Commission’s Erasmus+ Youth programme, European Solidarity Corps and beyond.