Key Action 2 Erasmus+ Project
Community Organising for Social Sustainability
The Project:
Following the study by Yael Ohana on the political dimension of youth work, the concept of participation today has changed to short term commitment to meaningful and tangible causes, against a long term commitment to a general idea which characterised the past. A minority of young people are members of youth organisations who claim to be the key speakers of all European youths. Community Organising refers to local issues, tangible and visible, creates a solution oriented thought in a timely manner and the attitude to activate to implement those solutions. In Alinsky!s theory the community organiser should be a community's outsider with an external view, help build the community and slowly step out handing over the process to the community, and such a role fits perfectly to a youth worker.
Community Organising means tacking communities which are subject to injustice and organise them to identify among themselves the resources to accomplish justice and fairness, in other words Community here is a synonym to solidarity.
Build on the competences of youth workers to act as community leaders, coaches, organisers, provide innovative leadership and organisational competences, and building literature and evidence around that in order to allow them to act locally as community organisers and in turn empower the target group, as a wheel in motion, the consortium professionals empower youth workers until they can independently support and organise youth communities, until the latter is enabled and empowered to autonomously carry out selfdirected community organising. Civic Engagement and Participation, many European institutions and public bodies are pointing fingers at the political disenfranchisement of youth, often because of the failure of political actors to address issues which are relevant and important to youth, being avoided or tokenized.
Training Course I
Italy - Lago Maggiore
Training Course II
Romania - Constanza
Training Course III
Turkey - Instanbul
Objectives:
The goal is to:
a) provide participants with youth coaching competences;
b) equip participants to act as coaches to identified local leaders and empower their leadership motivation and competences;
c) implement the second phase of community organising, creating leadership.
The trainings have foreseen the following topics and competences to be tackled and provided:
1) What is coaching and how to apply to youth - the 11 coaching competences defined by the International Coaching Federation;
2) Setting goals, follow through and self-motivation;
3) Eliciting virtues and potentials into a client;
4) Designing a coaching process and a coaching session;
5) Theories from : Kegan (Stages to adulthood) Piaget (Evolution of Learning) Graves (Values and Spiral Dynamics) Campbell (The Hero's Journey);
6) Attitude tests and how to deliver them to client and follow through;
7) Ericksonian storytelling;
8) Coaching linguistics, delivering open and powerful questions and active listening.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication (communication) reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.