Personal growth as a tool in Youth work Erasmus Project

Project Title

Personal growth as a tool 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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

In EU adolescents face a lot of mental distress, disorders and diagnosed mental health problems. Project Partner countries are at the top at the suicide rate; Slovenia is second, Belgium and Poland in fifth to seventh place. Due to the alarming data on the mental health of youth, the EU since 2008, it calls on youth organizations and all those who work with young people to be trained to recognize symptoms and react quickly.
In many years of youth work experience we detect various forms of distress adolescents and respond to them with appropriate programs. We have learned that our youth workers, leaders, trainers and animators that they work very good, proficient in many skills and processes through non-formal and experiential learning gained many competences; they lack aspect of personal growth as a cornerstone in youth work. There was a need for knowledge and skills beyond the mere knowledge of group dynamics as a field of inner-psychological interactions and dynamics as a result of these are visible in a group. In the psychosocial interactive dynamics, both the individual as well as group, play an important role in these dynamics, which reach all on a visual level, behavior and internal processes are taking place unconsciously. So it is very important what each person brings to the group, especially what youth worker brings to the group and that they understand the dynamics of this interaction. If a youth worker, leader, coach work on their own personal growth, it affects the growth of the group and the individual.
The same was through various joint projects and events detected in other EU organizations. When we talked about it with other youth workers,trainers, they immediately understood what we are talking about, but did not know how to name it until it was not verbalized. We are aware that we can only give our youth forward what we have ourselves. Therefore, we believe that knowledge of the internal processes in the relational level is essential for personal growth, which should be a fundamental tool in youth work. This is what we want to achieve with our project at a transnational level, because this need is common for partner organizations. Trans-national level gives the project huge added value. Enhanced cooperation between organizations from different countries contributed to the exchange of practices which have been identified in these countries and to the development of innovative practices, tools.
RESULTS:
– a strategic partnership was established, which helped to raise the quality of youth work in partner organizations
– A new tool for empowering youth workers has been developed
– we ensured the recognition of personal growth as a fundamental tool in youth work
– Personal growth increases tolerance and reduces peer violence, as the themes of transformation of anger and conflict are the basis of our program
– We have disseminated the results of the project among youth organizations at local, national and EU level and we will continue to do so.
TARGET GROUPS:
– youth workers, mentors, animators, leaders of informal youth groups
– teachers and educators
– everyone who works with youth.
Each organization selected 4 participants according to skills, competencies using the same key:
– Directly involved in the implementation of the project by the partners are employed youth workers with at least 3 years of experience
– the participants in the pilot local testing of the tool were employees, volunteers of the partner organization who have been leaders of the youth group or youth program for at least 1 year,
– Participants in international conferences: general professional and other public.
We developed a new, innovative tool in youth work with partner organizations from Poland and Belgium – a model of personal growth, which includes 5 key modules that compliment, upgrade and follow each other in a meaningful way. Our intellectual result consists of 5 modules:
1. INTEGRATION OF MY PERSONALITY
2. MY BACKPACK
3. THIS IS ME
4. PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY RELATIONSHIPS
5. VISIONS, GOALS AND COMMUNICATION
The project included 4 international project meetings, we developed intellectual results in three and tested them within our own organizations.
In the project we had two multiplication events, the final international conference, in Slovenia and Poland, which highlighted the topics discussed in the project itself and the presentation of new tools and test results.
We published an e-publication in 4 languages: English, Slovenian, Polish, Flemish and a presentation video for the purpose of informing and disseminating the results.
PROJECT DURATION: 24 months
EFFECTS: participants achieved change in personal growth, greater self-awareness, their own and other people’s needs, the importance of personal boundaries and the importance of processing burdening personal internal psychological content. They achieved new personal strength, the courage to make important changes and better relationships.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 72850 Eur

Project Coordinator

Drustvo SMC Maribor & Country: SI

Project Partners

• Salezjanskie Stowarzyszenie Wychowania Mlodziezy o. Rzepczyno
• Jeugdhulp Don Bosco Vlaanderen vzw