Intercultural Competence for Youth workers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Intercultural Competence for Youth workers

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; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

CONTEXT
Intercultural Competence for Youth workers (ICY) was an exchange of practices project focusing on developing youth workers’ intercultural competence in order to improve social inclusion in their groups. The four culturally different partners (YMCA Helsinki, ACSESO from Spain, Changemakerz from the Netherlands, and City Pirates from Belgium)
use physical education as a tool for social inclusion. They started the project to learn from each other to gain best practices in leading youth groups towards cultural awareness.

As all the partner organizations know, sports and physical education can be among the best tools to integrate people from different backgrounds.The ability to create bonds with teammates from very different cultural, religious, or socioeconomic backgrounds is instrumental in building empathy and understanding of people from different backgrounds.

However, we also know that sport can be a place for racism, intolerance, and discrimination. That same game that is supposed to create positive feelings and inclusion can cause long lasting scars to young people. Research shows that multicultural groups can either be very highly effective or the least effective, and the difference is in how well they are managed. Directing groups towards acceptance of diversity starts with the team leader’s understanding of their own prejudices, stereotypes, and values that affect the way they interact with people from other cultures. This is more often overlooked in preference to the multitude of ready-made material on how to run groups. This was the challenge ICY wanted to tackle!

OBJECTIVES
ICY’s goal was to facilitate social inclusion in diverse teams, and increase the cultural competence of the instructors and their organizations. This was accomplished by predisposing the partners to different ways of encountering people and leading the group. Cultural competence is a lifelong journey that requires self-reflection skills. All participants and partner organizations were challenged to reflect on their own values and cultural expectations. Partners conducted five job shadowing visits to observe these different methods to be later tested in their own groups. At the end of the project, these were compiled into one document and translated to several languages. The aim was to promote intercultural dialogue between youth work professionals around Europe and strengthen the knowledge and acceptance of diversity in the participating instructor’s youth groups.

PARTICIPANTS
Each of the four partner organizations were chosen as they use physical education or sports as a tool for integration. However, choosing only one specific type of youth work organization would have made the exchange of methods and practices too narrow. Hence ICY had a variety of different organizations: HNMKY (YMCA Helsinki) providing before and after-school activities, basketball, and summer camps in Finland, ACSESO providing non-formal education and youth programs in Spain, Changemakerz arranging non-formal educational opportunities for the youth in the Netherlands and City Pirates offering youth football in deprived urban areas in Belgium. This variety gave us new perspective into leading different types of youth groups. Additionally, ACSESO has a strong youth-run media team who supported the project in communication and media contacts. Each of the four organizations sent instructors to Job Shadowing Events to observe other project partners’ ways of using sports as tool for social inclusion and methods to develop their instructors’ intercultural competence.

RESULTS
ICY accomplished all their goals. There was a significant increase in the cultural competence of the trainers measured in IDI intercultural development inventory. This measuring tool proved that being exposed to new ways of leading groups, new methods, and frequent self-reflection, our perception of ourselves and our own cultural competence becomes more realistic. One main finding was that the gap between our imagined competence and our actual competence can be bridged by working on this skill. By observing other instructors and sharing experiences, instructors’ cultural knowledge level, cultural awareness and intercultural competence increased.
At the end of the project, all methods and exchanged practices were tested, improved and collected into one ICY Toolkit. This material can be found online in English, Dutch, Finnish, French and Spanish.
The significance of these results come from the validated tools used in the selection process of the participating organisations and measuring of its effectiveness. However, the most significant result is the group of instructors that have both learned methods for guiding their diverse youth groups and increased their own intercultural competence. The results of this project will have a long term benefit to organisations that use sport as a tool for inclusion.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 73002 Eur

Project Coordinator

HELSINGIN NUORTEN MIESTEN KRISTILLINEN YHDISTYS RY & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Jaouna
• ASOCIACION, CULTURAL, SOCIAL Y EDUCATIVA SEGUNDAS OPORTUNDADES
• Koninklijke Sporting Club City Pirates VZW – City Pirates Antwerpen