Changemakers

Period: 17-26 January 2019

Location: Sovata -Outward Bound Romania Youth Center and Gurghiului Mountains

Participants: 18 youth workers from 6 countries with no experience in the field of disadvantaged youth

Participating countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Romania

Partner organizations:

  • Élményakadémia Egyesület (HUN)
  • Fundacja Instytut Aktywizacji i Rozwoju Spolecznego (IAIRS) (POL)
  • Iniciativas de Proyectos de Formacion (ESP)
  • Associacao Novo Mundo Azul (PRT)
  • L`Orma (ITA)

Financial support: Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union

Our main goal:

Our goal is to develop 18 youth workers on personal and professional level in an international environment, during a 10 days course, offering them the possibility to grow their soft and hard skills, their competences and theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of disadvantaged youth work.

Specific objectives of the project are:

  • to grow their soft and hard skills
  • to learn new activities and best practices from each other which can be used with youth groups
  • developing communication skills: conquer behavioral style via DISC, learn about the non violent communication (NVC), practicing it on our example experiences from the past
  • increasing the level of theoretical and practical knowledge about work with disadvantaged youth

The elements of the program: get to know each other activities, team building activities, reflection groups, 3 day snowshoe expedition in Gurghiului Mountains, meta-debriefing, open space, closing

  • Opinions about the training:
    • I can highlight two main points for me: first it was the DISC test, which was about our behavioral style in connection with our communication style. It kept me thinking about my hidden part of self. The second was the expedition, where we were totally out of our comfort zone, and it was interesting to see how we cope with this stress differently.
    • The program exceeded the level of my expectations, I developed in self-knowledge, met a lot of nice youth workers, and learned a lot of new activities.
    • I succeeded in overcoming and conquering some of my fears.
    • I liked the internationality of the project because I had the opportunity to get to know more about other cultures.

    Photos about the training: https://www.facebook.com/pg/outwardbound.ro/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2290378284307552

    Testing:

    In the period February-April in all 6 partner countries the participants of the training organized one or more local projects in each partner country for disadvantaged youngsters.

    Because the winter expedition had a very deep effect on the participants and they realized how big the developing effect of an expedition on the participants is, in many countries they organized an expedition for different aged youngsters, but also team building programs.

    Photos about the local project: https://www.facebook.com/pg/outwardbound.ro/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2471832762828769