Intimacy, Relationships and Interculturality in Youth Work Erasmus Project

Project Title

Intimacy, Relationships and Interculturality in Youth Work

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: Inclusion – equity; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Migrants’ issues

Project Summary

CONTEXT
Our initiative focuses at the intersection of several contemporary challenges:
1. Relationships are the most important factor of our happiness and wellbeing (Baumeister) yet the spaces to these skills are scarce.
2. Gender roles and representations of sexuality are what Hofstede called the “taboo dimension” of cultures, so many are the related taboos and prescriptions. And currently these representations and taboos are undergoing deep changes. The recent series of scandals about sexual harassment and the Metoo movement highlight an aspect of this change.
3. Developing successful models of relating to others may be a challenge to all, but particularly to newcomers with different cultural backgrounds.
4. In many European cities there is a growing representation of groups of ‘young foreign men’ as synonym of threat, in the worst case becoming targets of negative campaign (Hungary) in the best merely a constant association to a ‘social problem’: “Why don’t they mix?”
Against this backdrop we see the role of the Youth Workers as crucial in assisting Young people from diverse backgrounds and walks of life in developing skills to connect across cultural and social boundaries.
Yet Youth Workers’ training rarely integrates modules on relational issues, on intimacy and sexuality, let alone in an intercultural perspective. As a consequence not only they cannot successfully support the Youth they work with in overcoming their challenges, but they themselves may be subjects of relational problems of their own, on the delicate issue of finding the good proximity.

HENCE OUR KEY OBJECTIVES
1) Helping youth workers to better address their relationship to the participants, successfully negotiating good distance / good proximity to ensure the coherence and safety of the collaboration process.
2) Offering training tools to youth workers to address issues related to relationships, intimacy and sexuality with culturally diverse groups. Help youngsters engage with others despite cultural differences, going beyond homogeneous groups that give the impression of ‘separation’ or ‘communautarism’ whether it is on the side of minority or majority.

ACTIVITIES and their IMPACTS
To reach our objectives we propose to engage in a co-constructive methodological development process to create a set of training materials together with Youth and Youth workers:
– The “Book of situations” (IO1) will serve youth workers (and other educators) to be able to identify cultural components in conflicts, misunderstandings related to relationships, friendships, intimate relationships (or harassment)
– “Skills to connect” (IO2) offering them tools to develop their own relational / emotional skills or those of the youth they work with
– The “Book of good proximity” (IO3) to help negotiate appropriate distance and proximity with their participants to be able to carry out their mission
– “Skills for intimacy” (IO4) offers training tools for youth workers to address issues related to intimacy with diverse groups of youngsters
Finally, we create an online learning tool based on videos: “Lessons of intimacy and relationships” (IO5) for youth workers to help them integrate the above products into their work practice either by establishing specific trainings or by inserting specific sessions into existing collaboration process.

METHODOLOGY
Our key methodological pillars are:
a) An intercultural approach capable of reflecting on cultural differences without forcing or reifying them
b) Applied psychology to develop individual skills for social and emotional learning
c) Positive sexuality education inviting to a reflection and discussion about intimacy, gender and sexuality in a safe way, helping to set and respect one’s own boundaries and those of the others
d) Theatre pedagogies, in particular Rainbow of Desires and Forum Theatre to create a collective learning process in inter/action.
e) Process Work to make sure that the learning is embodied and lively.

PARTICIPANTS
During the project we’ll involve directly 60 young people to create our training materials together, so that they are the closest possible to their needs and learning styles. We’ll involve 200 Youth Workers to test and assess our materials. We’ll engage in discussions with decision-makers and Youth Worker training institutions to integrate our products.

LONGER TERM BENEFITS
The longer term ambition of the project is to complete Youth Workers’ Training with our modules to
a) address issues related to relationships, gender, intimacy in an intercultural perspective and
b) develop skills to negotiate good distance with their participants in culturally heterogeneous settings

Project Website

https://intimacyacrosscultures.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 299811,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

ELAN INTERCULTUREL & Country: FR

Project Partners

• In Touch
• Associacio La Xixa Teatre
• Képes Alapítvány – a szociális és érzelmi készségfejlesztésért