"<< Objectives >>The Culture Garden: Youth Leadership for Collaboration TC provides essential tools and practices, as well as opportunities for individual and group self-reflection, which empower young people to succeed in any collaborative group context. The program engages with leadership, not as a quality held by one person or by a select few, but as a whole-group phenomenon. The governance practices a group uses, the ways that conflict, feedback, and communication are navigated, a group’s relationship to creativity and self-expression; its economic paradigms and more inform what kind of leadership it potentiates and responds to. In the project, youth leaders are trained to give young people experiential opportunities to learn and build confidence using the “cultural tools” that enable collaboration in their school, employment, and community contexts. ISSUES & NEEDS ADDRESSED:The revitalisation of rural areas, as well as the re-localisation and diversification of economies throughout the UK and Europe, require the initiation and successful management of innumerable small- to medium-scale initiatives. Although significant support is being mobilised for such initiatives by many European governments, there remain significant barriers to local youth engaging successfully in such endeavours. One often invisible barrier is the lack of a collaborative skillset to build the confidence and resilience required for individuals and teams to succeed over the long-term. In order for young people to participate more actively in their local communities and economies, they must have the education, training, and supported practice in the personal and interpersonal skills which ultimately allow effective, collaborative engagement to happen. In this TC we will combine 3 main elements: - Critical analysis of the phenomenon of GROUP CULTURE and an overview of the frameworks, tools, and practices that support COLLABORATION; - Individual and whole-group EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING & PRACTICE; - Creative/expressive and embodied activities to cultivate SELF-REFLECTION, SELF-AWARENESS, and RESILIENCEThe main aim of the training is to provide youth workers with competences & paradigms to empower young people to become effective collaborators in their local community and economic contexts.To reach this aim we have the following objectives:
- to critically engage with the phenomenon of group CULTURE, and to understand the defining elements and impacts of COLLABORATIVE group cultures;- to understand and value the important role of DIVERSITY in collaboration and collaborative cultures;- to learn FRAMEWORKS, TOOLS & PRACTICES for collaboration across the dimensions of: Diversity, Economics, Governance, Conflict, Communication, Somatic Psychology, and Place/Nature; - to PRACTICE and incorporate these frameworks, tools & practices within the group process;- to provide opportunities for individual SELF-REFLECTION in relation to each dimension to identify personal strengths and weaknesses, and to create a personal collaborative leadership PROFILE;- to EMPOWER young people to become more active participants in their local governments, economies, and communities, and to SHAPE their local cultures towards a more collaborative ethos;- to equip young people with the core skills and frameworks to succeed in the VOLATILE and EMERGENT conditions that are becoming the norm worldwide; - to CULTIVATE PERSONAL & GROUP RESILIENCE in the face of change and uncertainty This project links to the overall Erasmus+ objectives: - boost skills and employability- modernise education, training and youth work - focus on young people. And to the objectives focusing on youth:
- improve the level of key competences and skills of young people, including those with fewer opportunities... promote... social inclusion.
- foster quality improvements in youth work, in particular through enhanced cooperation between organisations in the youth field and/or other stakeholders;
- enhance the international dimension of youth activities and enhance the capacity of youth workers and organisations in their support for young peopleWe are also informed by the three pillars of the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2017 - Engage, Connect, Empower.During the course, participants will focus not only on exploring the inputs from the training team, but have ample opportunity to share their own practice & explore how to apply the learning in their local contexts. << Activities >>In this application we are proposing a 7-day residential training course with the name “The Culture Garden: Youth Leadership for Collaboration"" which would take place April 10-18, 2021 at The Findhorn Foundation, Scotland, UK. There will be 33 participants - youth workers, teachers, social workers - from the following 10 countries: Czech Republic; Slovakia; Italy; Turkey, Slovenia; Estonia; Spain; Greece; Hungary and UK. The participants consist of 27 direct participants, 3 trainers, 1 Project Coordinator and 2 logistics assistants/trainees. We will have 2-3 participants from each of the 10 participating organisations to ensure a good mix and balance in the group, numbers based on the needs and capacity of each organisation. We want to specifically target youth workers/youth leaders working with marginalised young people including different diversity/minority groups and refugees & migrants. For us the INCLUSION aspect is one of the most important characteristics of the project, we aim to have 30-50% of participants with fewer opportunities, including those working with disadvantaged young people as a target group. We will look for participants who:-are involved in youth work and are active in their communities,-are working with topics either of storytelling, media or global education (to provide a stimulating learning environment, we identified organisations who specialise in those fields)-are able and ready to work in English,-are and willing to commit to work on the objectives of the training courses and courses and participate in the whole duration.The programme is based on non-formal education methods and experiential learning. It will include many different activities, theory and practice of up to date information, evidence based tools and practice, plus reflection, discussions, open workshops to encourage critical thinking and personal contributions.Some of the competences that will be developed during the course are: non-formal educational methods; new knowledge of evidence based approaches to the effective self-management of mental health & wellbeing; new knowledge and understanding of new mental health definitions & approaches; ability to create curricula of activities & programming for their young people on the topics covered in this training course.<< Impact >>With this project we aim to increase the quality of youth work across Europe. We will equip participants with the knowledge, skills, methods & frameworks to design & deliver content, projects and programmes for the young people they work with - which can include the following aspects which they will learn during the training course.PARTICIPANTS: will develop new competences in leadership & good practice which they can pass on directly to the young people they work with. The project engages with leadership, not as a quality held by one person or by a select few, but as a whole-group phenomenon. The governance practices a group uses, the ways that conflict, feedback, and communication are navigated, a group’s relationship to creativity and self-expression; its economic paradigms and more inform what kind of leadership it potentiates and responds to. In this project, participants are trained to give the young people they work with experiential opportunities to learn and build confidence using the “cultural tools” that enable collaboration in their school, employment, and community contexts. TARGET GROUPS: YOUNG PEOPLE AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES: will benefit though improved quality of activities offered by trained youth workers and youth leaders. Youth workers will promote diversity and transfer common fundamental values.PARTICIPATING ORGANISATIONS: will have increased quality of their participants' activities and their multiplication among co-workers. Each organisation will send 2-3 of their members to the project - which will ensure they can support each other into implementing the new skills and methodologies. Through the project we want to deepen and strengthen established partnerships with our partner organisations and we foresee follow-up projects happening as a direct outcome of this cooperation. Furthermore, we want to invest into the strengthening of this network - as mentioned earlier we hope to achieve long-term cooperation with all the involved partners. We expect this project to be a catalyst for the creation and the implementation of a number of projects, within the Erasmus+ Youth programme and beyond, focused on the quality of the non-formal education and the topics of mental health & wellbeing - so important in this time. A strong focus will be put on how to pass the results of the course to the organisations and the beneficiaries back home. We will dedicate sufficient time on Day 7 to create session and activity plans appropriate to each participants'/organisations' target groups, which will be implemented with support from the partner organisations when they return home."