INITIATION – the process of becoming adult from childhood Erasmus Project

Project Title

INITIATION – the process of becoming adult from childhood

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); Social dialogue

Project Summary

The project ‘Initiation – the process of becoming an adult from childhood’ has lasted for 15 months, involving three partner organizations (youth theatre studios) from Estonia, Lithuania and Austria. While main initiative groups involved 15 youngsters aged 13-19 from each organization, the open performances and deep work with schools have reached the audience of over 1500 youngsters, with target group being youth with different social statuses and backgrounds.

The main aim of this project was to involve the local youth to think about issues that may await them in the process of becoming an adult and in the adult life through creative method of the youth theatre, helping them to safely enter the adult world and find own moral and civic position with referring to examples from classical literature.

Each young person expects that others will see him as an adult. Teenagers are especially trying to make strong decisions but often they don’t succeed and become depressed, or at worst bad decisions may have negative consequences for life. Youngsters suffer from the fact that their identity is not enough accepted and they haven`t ability to make strong decisions, which, by the way, is a very normal process, as during this period they are still not a part of society, they don’t understand their role in community and they might make mistakes.
Youth workers involved in this project have observe that the teenagers indeed are less focused on the society problems, see the world in black and white, focus on their rights and ignore responsibilities, including those for their own actions. We chose the historical term ‘initiation’ basing on the traditions of rites of passage for youth to become adults, in this process learning values of the world, recognizing laws and responsibilities. We found interest in the youth towards this topic and methods, thus established our goals accordingly. We feel like we have reached them all to a good extent.

– We have received an intercultural exchange on the topic of “Initiation” and learned how youth from other countries recognize this term and how they planned to put it into the main performance and disseminate later.
– The initiative groups have created performances based on examples of classical literature and successfully disseminated them locally among different social groups of youth with following discussions on topics of initiation and ‘I in the society’.
– We have involved the local youth to participate and think about the project topic through meetings, discussions, questionnaires and creative activities like playback theatre and forum theatre.
– With self-reflection tools (basing on YouthPass key competences, but not being limited to it), the initiative group members developed a better understanding of ‘I in the society’ and the process of becoming an adult from a child.
– We have carried out three international meetings of initiative groups from three countries in Lithuania (25-28.06.2018), Austria (21.09-24.09.2018) and Estonia (6.04-9.04.2019), aimed at establishing common goals, discussing the strategies of dissemination applicable to each youth theatre and country, as well as getting to know each organization better. During the meetings we have showed the social performances that we planned to disseminate and communicated in depth about addressing different target groups.
– We have facilitated the reflection process in initiative groups about gained knowledge, skills and attitude on the chosen theme at all stages of the project (preparation of social performances, international meetings, dissemination activities).
– We helped young people who wanted to live abroad after school to become aware of difficulties of living in another country.

The project consisted of three international meetings and a deep work on a local level, meeting up with schools and youth organizations and involving the youth into discussing and becoming more aware of the topic, empowering them to become more confident and responsible for their decisions and actions. We feel that all goals were achieved, with the initiative groups having felt a good connection and personal growth through involvement this project, and the feedback from the youth attending the open performances has, too, been positive, for we have stimulated their thoughts on adulthood in a creative and subtle way. The long-term benefits of this project will be seen throughout years thereafter for the youth from both initiative groups and dissemination target groups, as they go through this process of becoming adults later in life. However, it was seen from reflections and discussions that the youth have been deeply touched by this topic and that it has left an impact.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 32400 Eur

Project Coordinator

MTU Lasnamae Huvikool & Country: EE

Project Partners

• Cultural center of the municipality of Plunge district
• BiondekBühne