Stuttering is Beautiful Erasmus Project

Project Title

Stuttering is Beautiful

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 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

Young people who stutter (YPWS) often face social exclusion, stuttering affects their relationships with teachers and classmates, their happiness at social situations, they have often lower self-esteem, low self-perceived communication competence and apprehension in social situations. Most youth workers (YW), who could reach these young people don’t know what stuttering is, there are a lot of misunderstandings and certainly there is limited knowledge and skill about how exactly help YPWS. Just information in the form of brochure is not enough, but comprehensive strategy, that takes into account all the steps of communication process, is far more effective. What usually happens is that when YPWS goes to speech therapy and learns new speech sills, he or she will speak in different way. As it is still learning process and it is very difficult to transfer new speech skill to everyday life, the environment has to be supportive. With the new speech skills learned, at the beginning, YPWS usually starts to stutter even more and speak at slower rate than previously. When this young person goes to school or youth center, where everyone is speaking at fast rate and expecting this young person to speak similar way, it is extremely difficult for YPWS to start using new learned speech skills. Another case might be, that YPWS just wants to speak the way he/she speaks naturally. This can be very scary situation for YPWS, thus the environment has to be supportive. That is way it is very important that YW and YPWS work together and create a plan that suits this young person’s needs. This is when our online tool (O1) is needed. As a result, young people will come out of their comfort zone, their attitudes toward stuttering will change and communication skills will increase.

The objective of this project is to create easy to use online tool (O1) for YW, so they have knowledge and skills how to help YPWS.

Our target group is YW, YPWS (age 13-30), and other young people who communicate with YPWS. From population about 1% of people stutter. Number of YW vary, depending on the country, but we will train at least 20 YW from each participating country to work with YPWS.

The O1 to be created will situate in internet page and it takes into account following steps of communication process:
* Attention – what is the knowledge about stuttering of the person in communication situation? YW also establish contact with YPWS.
* Attitudes – what are attitudes toward stuttering of people in communication situation?
* Goal setting – what goals different people they have? Our online tool will help YW cooperate with YPWS to set proper goals.
* Planning – what strategies different people they have? The online tool tool will help YW together with YPWS to create long and short term plan that contains hierarchy.
* Behavior – what kind of behavior YPWS are typically practicing. Our tool will help YW together with YPWS accordingly to the previous steps to more effective behaviour and set up feedback to monitor the process.

Taken into account these five elements of communication process, the online tool will give suggestions and ideas for youth workers how to get more knowledge about stuttering, how to connect to YPWS, how to change young people’s attitudes toward stuttering, what kind of goals to set, what kind of plans to make and finally how to take action. All these steps will be discussed together with YW and YPWS. We have introduced our plan to YW, educators, people who stutter, speech therapists and overall feedback has been very positive. This tool can be used also with other young people, who have communication difficulties and with basically all young people.

In long term young people will have better relations, better self-esteem, they are bullied less, they have better memories and more positive outlook of life.

Project Website

https://stamily.org/manual/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 58891 Eur

Project Coordinator

EESTI KOGELEJATE ÜHING MTÜ & Country: EE

Project Partners

• Stichting Anatta Foundation
• Málbjörg