New models for youth growth through conflict management Erasmus Project

Project Title

New models for youth growth through conflict management

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Inclusion – equity; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The NEMO project has striven to provide young people with new approaches, methodologies and tools for managing conflicts linked to their cultural/social and working situation. These have been centred in non formal learning techniques; seeking to enable young people to articulate their conflicts and then find ways to overcome them, building shared solutions that boost their wellbeing, social inclusion and employability. Partners in the project believe that in this way, young people are empowered to develop critical judgement and participate confidently in society. For this project we took a broad view of the definition of young people, being those aged 16-30.

The Youth Report 2015 identifies young people’s human and social capital is one of Europe’s greatest assets for the future. The Report was focusing on the then economic crisis and its’ impact on young people. This has been further exacerbated by the impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic, which emerged in early 2020 and is still creating an impact in the second half of 2021. Unemployment rates are different among the Member States but youth unemployment rates reported by Eurostat in July 2021, compared with May 2020, showed an an increase of 1.2 percentage points over 2019. For the partners this project was very timely, as we could see even more necessity to find innovative ways to enable young people to manage conflicts.

The seven project partners used research to gain a better understanding of what conflict might look like from the young person’s perspective. The results of this research were published in both national reports and a trans-national report. A total of 382 young people responded to the surveys, across the seven partner counties, an average of 54 per country. This gave an good understanding for the partners of the characteristics of their specific young people. So for example, Italian partners were working with young people at local high schools in a city suburb, Polish partners were working with young people in higher education and in the UK, the target group were based in an area of high deprivation characterised by high levels of gang violence. This was taking place in early 2019, at a time well before the global pandemic. Fast forward to 2021, when following an extension of one year, partners were able to reflect on the differing impacts of Covid-19 on young people and integrate this understanding with the earlier research undertaken.

Following the first research phase, the partners worked together to understand what they could develop in terms of a common understanding and approach that might be then shared with other youth workers. In June 2019, the partners gathered for a ‘train the trainer’ practice sharing event in Caravaca in central Spain. Partners shared elements of their current practice methods and discussed the theoretical backgrounds to their practice approaches. The NEMO trainers’ training approach was characterised by:
• Fine-tuning approaches according to the specific target groups’ needs.
• Testing their existing approaches in a peer-learning process;
• Shaping a common framework
• Piloting their refreshed practices to measure the effectiveness and impact of the practices on target groups.

Piloting was scheduled for late Autumn 2019/early Spring 2020. Four partners had fully concluded their pilot before the impact of Covid-19. Once was engaged in the pilot process, and two had yet to start. The former, in England, switched to an online delivery. Two of the latter eventually also delivered in a virtual setting in 2021, and another returned to complete their evaluation when able to re-engage with schools. Despite the difficulties in maintaining momentum and working against a background of national and international anxiety and uncertainty, all partners were able to complete the process and deliver all the expected outputs. Moreover they were able to be adjusted to take into account the experience and understanding of what Covid-19 might add to the experience and management of personal conflicts for young people.

The partners have produced five final outputs:
Report on Self-assessment of Youth Conflict Management Skills – in two parts (Part I Statistical Data and Part II Good Practices)
NEMO Learning Model
NEMO Curriculum
NEMO Toolkit
NEMO Handbook.

These have been uploaded to the Erasmus+ Project Results platform and the project website www.nemoproject.eu and are also available at https://www.enterprise360.me/?page_id=1065
The project has been able to identify immediate impacts on the direct targets, the 150 young people who attended the pilot programmes and the colleagues and youth organisations who have expressed interest in the model and the associated outputs. All of the project pilots used evaluations which recorded positive impacts on well-being and confidence in managing conflict situations. This was particularly noticeable in the feedback of those who were supported during Covid-19.

Project Website

http://www.nemoproject.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 291741 Eur

Project Coordinator

E SQUARED (E2) ENTERPRISE AND EMPLOYABILITY CIC & Country: UK

Project Partners

• EQUAL Ireland Education Research and Related Services Co. Ltd
• INSTITUT ZA PODGOTOVKA NA SLUJITELIV MEJDUNARODNI ORGANIZACII ZDRUZHENIE
• RATO-ASSOCIACAO PARA A DIVULGACAO CULTURAL E CIENTIFICA
• TIBER UMBRIA COMETT EDUCATION PROGRAMME
• WYZSZA SZKOLA BIZNESU I NAUK O ZDROWIU
• ASOCIACION CULTURAL EUROACCION MURCIA