Website: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/projects/search/details/2022-3-AT01-KA153-YOU-000094420
Start date 01-01-2023
End date 31-10-2023
Budget: 24.975,00 €
Coordinator:
European Multidisciplinary Organization for Training and international Consulting
Partner: Szubjektív Értékek Alapítvány (HU) , Asociatia KASTA MORRELY (RO) , Fundacja Wspierania Edukacji i Rozwoju “Innowatorium” (PL) , ELIX – PROGRAMMATA ETHELONTIKIS ERGASIAS (EL) , Kulturni sudar Hrvatska (HR) , ICSE & CO (IT) , Brisa Intercultural (ES) , ORGANISATION EUROPÉENNE MULTIDISCIPLINAIRE POUR LA FORMATION ET LE CONSEIL INTERNATIONAUX (FR)
Objectives
The project “Community Conflict Transformation Through Youth Work” was based on the premise that building inclusive and peaceful societies free of any acts of violence (cultural, institutional, and direct) is a daunting challenge, particularly in times of global crises. This premise is deemed particularly prevalent in the face of increased political polarisation and social marginalisation. As a result, violent acts such as hate speech, racism, discrimination, and xenophobia have increased because when things go wrong, people tend to spread toxic narratives to blame the weaker or the “others” which fuel not only fears and prejudices but also hatred against underprivileged groups. Instead of hyping up these issues, our project took a different direction and aimed to provide solutions. Our approach was the Conflict Transformation as a sub-topic of peacebuilding which fits local communities the best. In this approach, it is the members of the community who can be the “Transformers” and in our case these were youth workers and youth leaders. Hereby, our theory of change was “When youth workers are provided with practical instruments and results-based tools to prevent, resolve, and transform youth-relevant social conflicts and issues, this will result in reducing the probability of the outbreak of conflictual issues and violent acts in societies that exclude or marginalise youth, consequently, a culture of youth participation will take root”.
In this regard, the ten main objectives of this project were:
VI. OBJECTIVES:
1. explore current social conflicts that are affecting youth from different perspectives;
2. enforce conflict transformation processes as an empowering tool for youth civic participation;
3. foster youth social engagement as a tool and an opportunity for social community transformation;
4. provide innovative and structured ways to positively intervene socially and motivate youngsters to engage locally;
5. enhance youth workers’ understanding of non-violent methods and tools for civic participation and social transformation;
6. support the youth workers in acquiring skills to improve their civic involvement as agents of change in their societies;
7. compile a concise training guide that can be further used on the local level;
8. reinforce synergies between formal education, non-formal training, societal involvement, and social change.
Implementation
The project consisted of a mobility for youth workers that took place in Vienna, Austria; from September 12th to 17th August 2023 excluding the travel days. The mobility was for 30 youth workers and leaders from Austria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, and France. However, we managed to get extra funding from Anna Lindh Foundation from its EU-funded Programs to include 2 more participants from Algeria and Tunisia, which was of significant added value to the whole program because these brought more diverse perspectives and made the training more intercultural.
Our participants needed to respond to a set of criteria, namely:
THE PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS:
– Living in one of the participating countries:
– Are between 20 and 30 years old.
– Can commit to full participation during the whole activity and in all sessions.
– Can communicate in English.
– Wish to learn new skills, methods, and tools.
– Wish to improve your conflict transformation capacities.
– Ready to work in a team to design and implement an initiative.
– Be working with youth and motivated to explore new approaches in youth work.
– Have the ability to do the follow-up initiative.
– Ready to support dissemination and visibility activities online and offline.
– are curious to learn and you appreciate diversity in every sense.
– would like to build new friendships and international connections.
– Having a high interest in learning more about diversity and developing associated values;
– Being interested in learning more non-formal skills, methods and workshop techniques;
– Being capable of working and cooperating with others;
– Willing to commit to preparation, follow-up and dissemination activities;
– Willing to build closer connections with an international community;
– No previous experience in Erasmus+ was needed.
Through collaborative work with partner organizations, 2 to 4 participants from each participating country were selected. And each country group had at least one participant with fewer opportunities that we received inclusion support for organizations for. So in total 9 reported persons, but in fact we had many more. For example, the whole group from France was actually with fewer opportunities, they all have migration backgrounds and never participated in extra training programs due to economic obstacles and they are not fully integrated yet. Each group brought its dynamics, its own societal characteristics and its aspects of culture depending on their geographical rich and diversified provenance. It has been noticed that participants were differently challenged in terms of inclusion: The ‘How’ and the ‘What’ were often divergent from a country to another, and even from one participant to another from the same country. Yet, shared points and issues, common objectives and similar solutions were managed to be found. Through a series of gradual and progressive activities, considerable progress was made by a homogenous group that has eventually been created throughout the program out of different but complementary backgrounds. Besides the formally included and funded participants in the project, we included several other youth workers from our local community in Vienna in some of the activities such as the intercultural night, the open spaces, and the group outdoor and informal activities.
Overall, we had 30 participants of which 21 identified themselves as woman and 9 identified themselves as men. All participants ranged between 20 and 50 years old. The average age was 25. Out of 30 participants we had 9 with immigration/migration backgrounds coming from Colombia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Azerbaijan. Also, for 10 participants this was their first time to participate in an ERAMSUS+ project and for several of them it was the first time to travel out of the country. In total, 18 participants considered themselves or were considered as participants with fewer opportunities: 3 Geographical; 5 Economic; 2 Social; and 8 Cultural obstacles.
Results
I. TANGIBLE RESULTS.
We created an online resources center on padlet with all created and used materials. Link: http://tinyurl.com/ywzuqk7s
This includes:
1. Project multimedia: 8 clarification videos recorded by the participants about the concepts discussed and the tools learned. The videos were created as part of a group task during the training and then each video was used in the program to discuss the respective content and build common understanding. The videos also become a great source of inspiration in the follow-up activities carried out by the participants, and all partners have been using them in their educational activities to showcase good practices.
2. 9 long-term initiatives presentations created during the training and to be enforced in the near future as part of their youth work.
3. A training booklet about the methodology and some of the materials used in the training to provide participants with a guide to replicate this training on the local level in a simplified way for various target groups. Its goal was to harness the gained knowledge by the participants and putting them in the shoes of multipliers who has the mission to spread their knowledge and we decided to do so by actively involving the participants in this result and it became a nice documentary of their experience and also a guiding source for them in their daily life.
4. Project Blog was written to document the whole experience and also some of the follow-up activities. This blog was used in dissemination activities as well, and it has reached more than 210 views at the moment of submitting this report.
Link: https://www.emotic.org/post/training-course-community-conflict-transformation-23
II. INTANGIBLE RESULTS
The project was designed around the learning outcomes relevant for the participants and delivered through non-formal learning and learning by doing methods. As a basis for setting learning outcomes, we used the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy model (2012) of educational objectives. Being part of the whole process, participants enriched all four knowledge dimensions from factual (terminology, details, elements, and trends), conceptual (classifications, categories, principles, generalizations, theories, models, and structures), procedural (skills, criteria, conditions, techniques and methods), to metacognitive (own abilities, own areas for development). They first learned about the framework of visible and invisible violence, including concepts such as “violence”, “conflict”, “peace”, “and “transformation” to build a common understanding among all. Further, they got introduced to tools to analyse an existing conflict and think about possible solutions. As a next step, they worked in small groups (national teams) to design their own initiatives that address any topic that they wish to influence. They were supported during the training to design a comprehensive local initiative with an implementation plan. All groups presented their initiatives (problem, solution and intervention strategy) and got feedback. After the training, all groups will be further supported by the team to implement these newly designed initiatives as a follow-up to this training on the local level.
Therefore, the project enabled participants to learn about:
– core values and benefits of conflict transformation, different approaches to enhance youth civic participation;
– the impact and effects of social crises on youth civic participation and their marginalisation;
– realities of various youth groups in different countries and a deeper understanding of youth work practices, current challenges, and trends and how to tackle them through conflict transformative tools;
– holistic concepts of conflict transformation and youth participation;
– alternative ways of responding constructively to marginalisation of youth;
– comprehensive conflict analysis using five different tools;
– strategic methods for designing, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating conflict transformation projects;
– practical instruments to ensuring success in conflict transformation projects that enhance youth civic participation.
