Preventing Gender based Violence: Creating a youth workers toolkit. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Preventing Gender based Violence: Creating a youth workers toolkit.

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: Health and wellbeing; Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Gender Based Violence (GBV) is a worldwide issue and one that youth workers face on a daily basis in their practice. The inequality and discrimination which occurs in youth clubs often occurs when the individuals are unaware that their thoughts and/or actions cause harm to another. It is a key role for youth workers across Europe to challenge this behaviourand educate the young people they work with about critically analysing their position within their communities and explore how they can model positive relationships.

Preventing Gender Based Violence: A Youth Workers Toolkit brought together 10 youth workers from Iceland and Scotland. They worked over a 12 month period to build a strategic partnership, with the main purpose of exploring and sharing what activities/methods are currently used in their communities to challenge this issue. 5 youth workers were from the North East of Glasgow, which has some of the highest rates of GBV in the country and 5 were from Reykjavik, the most populated area of Iceland. The participants were selected based on their desire to learn more about GBV Prevention methods and their willingness to share good practice. They are all youth workers with a lot of experience in working with youth and in the methods commonly used in youth work.

The main objective of the project was to create a ‘toolkit’ to share with youth workers in their community and beyond on how we have found to be the most effective and useful activities, methods and approaches when challenging GBV.
This toolkit consists of video recordings; short clips which explain simply how a each topic is important to a youth worker and how they could use the activities in their own practice. The aim of the videos is to build confidence of youth workers to tackle GBV in their work, give examples of ways to do it and also to provide links to existing materials on the topics. The video recordings were created in a ‘Stop-Go’ animation style so that they are accessible for staff to use.

description of undertaken activities:
Initially the groups explored the work that already existed in their own countries, talking to other youth workers and those who work on gender based violece prevention or other areas connected to GBV. There was also teambuilding activities to ensure the group worked well together throughout the year. There was then a study visit in Iceland and Scotland for the other participants to gain an insight into this work; with a lot of visits to local projects. Both elements (Icelandic and Scottish) had a conference where practitioners came together to share examples of work being undertaken around GBV but to also explore the ‘gaps’ that youth workers would be required to in partnership.
There was working sessions with both countries during the study visits and a lot of meetings and working sessions in each country. Participants would meet regularly in their groups to divide the work and share learning. The creation of the videos also took a large amount of time; with the group ensuring that both countries were happy with the output.
There was regular skype meetings between the two project leaders which also maintained a consistent approach.

The impact of the project was on many levels, some impacts were forseen and others came as a surprise to participants.
-The participants gained an in-depth knowledge of the issue and skills in appraising existing work, some of the work we saw was not aimed at preventing violence directly but through the project we learned how much impact things such as focusing on gender stereotypes can have on GBV.
-All youth workers who have access to the videos now have a resource made available to them which will make it easier for them to challenge GBV. in the project and still now both organisations are doing all they can to make the materials available to as many yout workers as is possible.
– This will mean that young people will receive the highest quality prevention methods which will allow them to understand GBV in their own context and how they can be agents for change.
-An impact that was less expected was for example that the youth in the participating organisations learned a little bit about the project, Erasmus+ and stared to explore there ownability to work on projects like these, travel and learn in a more international setting.
-Furthermore, the passion and determination of partners included in the project showed us that this project is merely the beginning of a wider piece of work. The conferences allowed us to see the gaps in practice (lack of understanding/confidence) within youth workers and also the videos have started a discussion about ‘how’ this could be improved in future projects.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 33043 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fristundamidstodin Kringlumyri & Country: IS

Project Partners

• St Paul’s Youth Forum