The main purpose of the project “Escape the Unemployment” is to create tangible open educational resources that promote the development of employability skills among youth. These innovative intellectual outcomes will be in the form of pedagogical and methodological guides, enabling the production of green educational escape rooms. During the project, youth workers from Cyprus had the opportunity to participate in the “Escape the Unemployment” Learning Teaching Training Activity (LTTA) where they travelled to Šabac, a small city in western Serbia to meet youth workers from Serbia and Spain, the two country-partners for this project.
The participants from Cyprus shared insights from their experience of designing and creating an escape room from scratch. For them, the most valuable lesson was the importance of teamwork. Although they encountered challenges at the start, teamwork soon made the process more manageable and enjoyable. They noted that effective communication among team members was essential, allowing for smoother collaboration. Creativity and imagination also played vital roles, as they discovered these qualities to be key in creating an engaging escape room experience for participants.
Throughout the project, participants reported enhancing several skills, particularly in using new escape room tools and adopting “outside-the-box” thinking. These skills connected back to their creativity and imagination, as they were often required to use tools in innovative ways or find “smart” solutions to challenges. Teamwork was another skill they honed, helping them become more collaborative and adaptable team players.
One of the main challenges participants faced was designing puzzles that flowed logically from one to another while maintaining a balanced level of difficulty. They aimed to make the escape room engaging but neither too easy nor too complex. Another hurdle was understanding that each team member’s thought process varied, meaning that what seemed obvious to one person might not be to another. This realization highlighted the importance of empathy and adaptability in their design process.
Despite their previous experiences with escape rooms as players, participants discovered that creating an escape room scenario was far more demanding than expected. However, they saw the value in initiatives like this, as the escape room format offers a unique blend of entertainment and practical skill-building. They concluded that projects promoting training and education through escape rooms could have significant personal and professional benefits, combining fun with skill enhancement.
