The project ’Emotional Intelligence in Youth Work’ (EQinYW) is aiming at developing an up-to-date and sustainable concept for an educational opportunity for young people aged 14-25 that is unique in the purpose of raising awareness on the Emotional Intelligence as a basic competency element for a better life. Moreover the project is aiming at developing a parallel curriculum for youth workers, on the basis of the results of the work with youth groups, able to support and increase their competencies on EQ at personal and working level. The project intends to create a publication on the relevance of the emotional competence in youth work for the empowerment of young people and consequently for the empowerment of the local communities - O1 -; a manual on tools for youth workers supporting the development of the emotional intelligence in young people - O2 -; a training course for youth workers O3. As part of the activities for the realization of the manual a testing phase will be carried out in the 6 partners countries involving 300 young people. Two training courses will be run, C1 addressed to the staff in charge of implementing the project and developing the project results, C2 to youth workers aiming at increasing the emotional competence. The whole concept will be piloted with 17 individuals in joint staff positions for the length of the project, 300 youth for the experience and testing of the curriculum at local level, and other 18 youth workers involved in training; along with this the activities will be piloted during 6 national multiplier events in Spain, Italy, Austria, Netherlands, Slovenia and Germany. The project results will be accessible through the European network and through the information channels of the partner organizations. Jugendkulturarbeit (Germany) is the lead partner of the 18 months project, with the 5 partners Limina (Austria), Euroaccion (Spain), Youth4youth (Italy), Anatta foundation (Netherlands) and Zavod Ambitia (Slovenia).
The project ’Emotional Intelligence in Youth Work’ (EQ in YW) was a collaboration of six international partners, which developed updated and sustainable educational concept for young people to learn more about the Emotional Intelligence that corresponds with the personal, social and learning competence. The purpose of this project was to recognize the theoretical background of the emotional intelligence, to create practical curriculum for youth workers and to disseminate our work among other partners. Project developed (1) a theoretical context on emotional intelligence with the general understanding what emotional intelligence is. Project also developed (2) list of shorter articles which complement the context and show that emotional intelligence can be found in many fields of work, proving the need for the interdisciplinary work. We have also developed (3) an extensive manual, combining different practices for emotional intelligence support in youth work and (4) created a training course curriculum for the youth workers. All practices were tested on more than 300 young people and several youth workers and was disseminated among more than 100 people and organisations in Germany, Austria, Spain, Slovenia, Netherlands and Italy. Our Facebook site (https://www.facebook.com/eqinyouthwork/?ref=bookmarks) has more than 400 followers so far, and the number is still growing. Partners of the project reached an understanding to keep posting important information on emotional intelligence on the FB site after the projects completion, to expand the interest in such topic and to bring more understanding of the emotional intelligence in ones life.