The Maze of Change: Nonformal education for re-writing life stories

Objectives

The main goal of the project “The Maze of Change: Nonformal education for re-writing life stories” is to increase the quality of services offered to young people in situations of major personal and social change and adapt non-formal methods to unforeseen situations at the macro social level. This goal will be achieved through 3 specific objectives:
O1. Developing the skills of 18 youth workers from 6 European organizations, to help young people cope with the process of losing the imagined future, by developing the ability to create positive, proactive and implementable life scenarios in the immediate future, even in the condition a stressful social context, through innovative non-formal learning methods, such as therapeutic metaphor and narrative approach.
O2. Improving the quality of personal development programs for young people, by developing an innovative working methodology, by using therapeutic metaphor and other non-formal learning methods, leading to a much faster adaptation of young people to unforeseen life situations and flexibility in managing plans on a personal and professional level.
O3. Increasing the organizational capacity of 6 organizations from 6 European countries (Romania, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Poland and Cyprus) to provide support and non-formal education for the reconstruction of life and planning at personal and professional level, for young people and youth workers. The target group for this goal is twofold, because youth workers face the same difficulties and first of all, they are the ones who need support to integrate unforeseen life situations, to understand the process and then to be able to implement the proposed changes, helping young people to change their perspective.
The idea of this project started from facing the struggles associated with the current situation at an international level – of the Cobid-19 pandemic which caused major changes and a stressful context for the entire global population. Through this project, we strictly focus on the topic of young people in managing their emotions and integrating this event in their lives, seeing this as a challenging event, which causes changes and acquisitions of new skills, rather than as a catastrophic event, which determines the loss of the future that they imagined personally and professionally. The problems that young people face during this period are the symptoms of anxiety, depression, panic attacks, demotivation and non-involvement in actions already planned, conflicts and relationship problems, etc. The problems faced by youth workers are mainly the lack of involvement of young people in activities, their lack of motivation to continue their plans and activities already planned, but also the difficulty of managing their very strong emotions (anger, frustration, sadness).

Activities

The main activity to be implemented is a mobility of youth workers, organised as a training course in Romania, Iasi, through which 18 youth workers will acquire skills and competencies necessary to use therapeutic metaphor and narrative approach in their activities with young people, to increase their level of motivation and to integrate in a healthy way, in their life scenario, the major changes produced by the Covid-19 pandemic, at macro level. As follow-up activities, each national group will organize a workshop with at least 10 young people, through which they will apply what they have learned Also, through the collaboration of all partners and participants, at the end of the project, there will be developed guide of good practices to explain how to use metaphor to facilitate change and to develop flexibility in building life scenarios.

Impact

Expected results:
– Significant improvement of the activities of 18 youth workers from 6 organizations (6 countries) for the use of therapeutic metaphor and narrative approach in the process of motivating young people to get involved in their own lives and in the life of the community in which they live
– organizing a TC in Iasi, Romania, for 6 working days
– organizing 6 workshops, with 60 young people who will benefit from the methods learned by the youth workers who guide them
– empowering the partnership between the 6 partner organizations to include the therapeutic metaphor in their daily activities and to offer services with a high level of quality to the young beneficiaries

Project No.  

2020-2-RO01-KA105-080772

Coordinator: Asociatia Institutul De Cercetare Si Studiul Constiintei Cuantice (Romania)

 

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