A training course for youth workers who want to improve their interactions with participants experiencing crisis or difficult situations throughout the activities

This training course is a successor of No Panic in 2017. It will take place in Frankolovo, Slovenia from July 27th – Aug 3rd.

The project

The aim of the project was to prepare youth workers, trainers, project coordinators, and mentors to deal with situations when participants of their activities experience a crisis and find it difficult to continue with the activity. In our work experience we met several people involved in implementing international youth exchanges, seminars, EVS projects, who shared with us their doubt – what to do when my participant finds it too challenging to take active part in the project? Some of them had to deal with a situation such as a psychological crisis, a sudden death of a close relative, revealing of a mental illness. These youth workers shared with us their feeling of confusion and helplessness to react.

Realising that youth workers face a challenge to manage situations with their participants in crisis moments, brought an idea for an international training course, which would develop or improve communication and crisis management competences of those youth workers who have encountered such challenges in their work. The project  has brought together organisations from 11 programme countries: Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey.

The main activity of the project was an international Training Course, planned to reach the objectives of equipping its participants in competences enabling them to manage situations of crisis with participants of their activities by:
-identifying the roles and responsibilities of a youth worker, trainer, mentor, and project coordinator in a crisis situation of a participant
– raising knowledge about psychological crisis, its possible underlying reasons, how to recognise it and how to address different types of situations
– sharing experience of being in different challenging situations for peer-supervision
– equipping participants with open and proactive attitudes towards crisis situations
– equipping participants with tools of coaching to conduct meaningful and useful conversations in complex situations
– practicing empathic, focused, constructive communication and conversation
– practicing crisis management
– creating space for networking and peer support
– improving professional language skills for inclusive acting in a diverse environment, including linguistic diversity.

Programme of the training was based on working in groups, self-exploration and reflection, peer coaching and experiential learning. Participants practiced communicating with others using the methods and tools of Non-violent Communication, Motivational Dialogue, and managing difficult situations using the methods and tools coming from Solution Focused Approach.

Trainer’s team

Dr. A. Biba Rebolj

Is a trainer, coach and therapist, passionate about useful conversations. Living in Slovenia and United Kingdom, she works with individuals and groups, who find themselves in challenging and complex situations. Using Solution Focused Brief Therapy and Coaching, she assists them in building rapid change towards desired outcome.

Marta Skorczyńska

On a daily basis providing psychological support for EVS volunteers, supporting and monitoring their learning process, and stimulating their creativity and initiative. Experienced in communication, managing multi-cultural groups, cooperating with NGOs in Poland and Portugal. Non-formal education trainer, in her work finding inspiration in drama, voice and body training, games for educative purpose, as well as coaching and solution focused approach.

The project delivered following outcomes:
– 22 youth workers equipped with competences and tools needed for empathic, focused and constructive communication with their participants in their activities
– 22 youth workers who will have increased awareness of how to address challenging situations during their own activities
– increased networking and peer support in the target group
– increased number of youth workers competent to include young people in disadvantaged situation, facing difficulties to participate in a mobility activity
– increased number of youth workers open to manage their work in a diverse environment, including linguistic diversity.

The project was designed to bring concrete changes in managing difficult situations in partner’s future activities, which influences the impact of the project on the local communities of participants too. The results have been disseminated to reach to other people who might be looking for peer support finding themselves feeling helpless, confused, or reluctant to finding a solution in similar situations with the participants of their activities. We have closely monitored the learning outcomes of our participants in a follow up survey a couple of months after the training. Below are links to the results. As you could see, our endeavours have been more than fruitful, which is another proof that Solution Focused Approach works, is efficient and can be used in a wide variety of settings.

no need for panic_pre-post_1

no need for panic_pre-post_2

And here’s a link to more trainings and events like this one. Enjoy!