WYRED Platform, the ecosystem for the young people

Abstract

The WYRED Platform is a technological ecosystem developed as part of WYRED (netWorked Youth Research for Empowerment in the Digital society), a European Project funded by the Horizon2020 programme. As society changes, there is a need to understand how it is changing, to explore what is going on. The young people have a key role to play in our society. They are frequently the drivers of new behaviours and understandings, and since they are part of the future society their views and perceptions should be considered. However, they are not well represented and their voices are unheard, and this makes it hard for re-search and policy to identify and understand their needs. The aim of the WYRED Platform is to provide the tools to support dialogue and research processes in which children and young people can express and explore the key issues that they consider as important. To design it, different stakeholders were involved, and several questionnaires and social dialogues were carried out. The WYRED Platform is organized in multicultural and interdisciplinary commu-nities where young people can develop research projects with the support of facilita-tors from different European institutions and associations. The communities have different tools such as forums to establish dialogues and coordinate research cycles, calendars to share dates and organize events or activities, surveys to develop or evalu-ate the projects, a version control system for files to support the documentation gen-erated during the research processes. Also, it provides a tool to publish the results of the research projects. One of its main innovations is the strongly commitment to user privacy, it is de-signed as a safe space in which children and young people can be free to express themselves as they wish. Moreover, it design is centred around and driven by children and young people.