Overcoming fear of failure Erasmus Project

Project Title

Overcoming fear of failure

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 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Vision of the project:
The project aims to solve the most significant issues that prevent young people from starting any endeavour – fear of failure, which has roots in shame culture. The project will equip youth workers, leaders and young adults with methods, tools, and guidance to be able to plan their future and apply it into reality without fear of failure.

Reasoning for the project:
In a morally supported culture, called a guilt culture, “you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture, you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honours or excludes you. In the shame culture, social exclusion makes people feel they are bad”.(Crouch 2016, The shame culture – https://bit.ly/3cJZuB4)
The omnipresence of social media has created a new sort of shame culture, since it’s a world of constant display and observation, where success equals inclusion and acceptance.
Our internal research found interesting facts in the study “The effect of You Can Do It! Education in six schools on student perceptions of wellbeing, teaching, learning and relationships”, where researchers have developed and implemented a positive psychology program through a “Train the trainer” methods. The results indicated an overall positive effect on students’ attitudes and self-perceptions of different aspects of their wellbeing, fostering motivation and confidence – https://bit.ly/36k6fs9 .
General aim of the project:
With our project, we aim to prevent/mitigate the feeling of fear regarding the chances of failing any endeavors, through the use of positive psychology. We will foster the learning and implementation of positive psychology to change the view on mistakes in one’s life, helping to cope with the effects of failure.
Positive psychology is a scientific study on what makes people thrive and focuses on behaviours that can lead to a more optimized frame of mind to lead to more practical actions, much like cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Compared to CBT, positive psychology focuses more on what makes already-functional; it focuses on strengths instead of weaknesses (Martin Sellingman, Father of modern positive psychology – https://bit.ly/PositivePsychologyDef ). Positivity improves life, working place, family and society as a whole.

Therefore, our project has a focus on how to handle the problem of preventing fear of failure with a universal approach which can be useful for young adults and youth workers, that will be our target group.

Impact on target groups

Youth Workers:
Increase their understanding of fear of failure and its effect on young people
Successfully handling difficult situations in correlation with fear of failure
Learning how to engage with youth regarding this topic
New teaching methodologies (problem-based learning)

Young adults (18+):
Realizing the consequences of fear of failure by working on positive thinking
Gaining a new perspective and insight when it comes to possible outcomes that may occur when facing fear of failure online.
Knowing how to deal with fear of failure after going through specifically designed courses and educational workshops, thus, helping to prevent it and its spread on others.

Participants:
In the project, we will include

Youth centres: 10 – 2 Per country
Youth workers: 20 – 2 Per youth centre
Young Adults: 50 – 5 Per youth centre
Country mentors: 10 – 2 Per country
Number of people on LTT: 12 – 2 Per partner

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 152683 Eur

Project Coordinator

Youth Initiative Center & Country: NL

Project Partners

• SMART IDEA Igor Razbornik s.p.
• YOUTHFULLY YOURS SK
• Zavod Aspira, zavod za razvoj posameznika in družbe
• Ragina Ltd
• JumpIN Hub – Associação para a Inovação e Empreendedorismo