Title: Initiation – the process of becoming adult from childhood Project duration: 14 month: Partners: 3 organizations, youth theatre studios (3 youth initiative groups from Lithuania, Estonia and Austria) Venue: Youth Initiative meetings will be in Lithuania, Plunge; Austria, Baden; The main meeting - Estonia Tallinn Main aims: -- To involve local youth with helping of young initiative 3 theatre groups (each group in their country) to the process of initiation from childhood to adulthood through method youth theatre, prepare local youth for a collision with the problems of adulthood and its solutions, help to find own civic and moral position. - To receive intercultural exchange of the theme “Initiation”, help young people who are going to study and live abroad get known about the difficulties of adult life in another country. Objectives - To create by initiative groups social performances based on the following classical literature as W. Golding "Lord of the Flies", H. Lee “To kill a Mockingbird”, Y. Zamyatin “We: A Novel” etc. and disseminate its among different social youth groups with talk about main project theme “initiation” and “I in society”. - To involve local youth to the topics of projects through meetings, discussions, questionnaires and other activities (playback theater, forum theater) - To find partners from local social organizations who can facilitate the involvement of local youth in our project - To concentrate on the self-assessment of each member of initiative groups that to understand meaning “I in society” and become more aware of the process of initiation from childhood to adulthood. (YoutPass and 8 key competences) - To organize meetings of 3 initiative groups from 3 programme countries for sharing the experience and results and creating plans for dissemination stage (show the social performance and manage conversation with other involved participants who will be a spectators) - To reflect by initiative groups gained knowledge, skill and attitude of the chosen theme after all stages of the project (by the way, tried to reflect it all the time) - To receive intercultural exchange of the theme “Initiation” and how other youth from other countries recognize this term though the year of preparation and how they will input it to the main performance and disseminate it after that. Project stages: 1. Preparation , searching the topic of the project and creating the performance - each participant in own country (01/01/18 – 20/03/2018) 2. Meetings in Lithuania (21. 03.2018 - 25.03.2018) (20.03.2018 - arrival day and 26.03.2018 - departure day) ), in Austria 05-07.2018 - 09.07.2018 (04.07.2018 - arrival day and 10.07.2018 - departure day), in Estonia the main meetings 6 days 05.10.2018-9.10.2018, (04.10.18 - arrival day, 10.10.18 - departure day) 3. Dissemination (Working with local Youth in each own countries through showing the performance on the topic of the project and information about the experience of partners from other countries in carrying out this project to a local youth in each countries) 12.10.2018-28.02.2019 January 2017 – ONLINE reflections, feedback from initiative groups about the project and dissemination stage
The project ‘Initiation – the process of becoming an adult from childhood’ has lasted for 15 months, involving three partner organizations (youth theatre studios) from Estonia, Lithuania and Austria. While main initiative groups involved 15 youngsters aged 13-19 from each organization, the open performances and deep work with schools have reached the audience of over 1500 youngsters, with target group being youth with different social statuses and backgrounds. The main aim of this project was to involve the local youth to think about issues that may await them in the process of becoming an adult and in the adult life through creative method of the youth theatre, helping them to safely enter the adult world and find own moral and civic position with referring to examples from classical literature. Each young person expects that others will see him as an adult. Teenagers are especially trying to make strong decisions but often they don’t succeed and become depressed, or at worst bad decisions may have negative consequences for life. Youngsters suffer from the fact that their identity is not enough accepted and they haven`t ability to make strong decisions, which, by the way, is a very normal process, as during this period they are still not a part of society, they don’t understand their role in community and they might make mistakes. Youth workers involved in this project have observe that the teenagers indeed are less focused on the society problems, see the world in black and white, focus on their rights and ignore responsibilities, including those for their own actions. We chose the historical term ‘initiation’ basing on the traditions of rites of passage for youth to become adults, in this process learning values of the world, recognizing laws and responsibilities. We found interest in the youth towards this topic and methods, thus established our goals accordingly. We feel like we have reached them all to a good extent. - We have received an intercultural exchange on the topic of “Initiation” and learned how youth from other countries recognize this term and how they planned to put it into the main performance and disseminate later. - The initiative groups have created performances based on examples of classical literature and successfully disseminated them locally among different social groups of youth with following discussions on topics of initiation and ‘I in the society’. - We have involved the local youth to participate and think about the project topic through meetings, discussions, questionnaires and creative activities like playback theatre and forum theatre. - With self-reflection tools (basing on YouthPass key competences, but not being limited to it), the initiative group members developed a better understanding of ‘I in the society’ and the process of becoming an adult from a child. - We have carried out three international meetings of initiative groups from three countries in Lithuania (25-28.06.2018), Austria (21.09-24.09.2018) and Estonia (6.04-9.04.2019), aimed at establishing common goals, discussing the strategies of dissemination applicable to each youth theatre and country, as well as getting to know each organization better. During the meetings we have showed the social performances that we planned to disseminate and communicated in depth about addressing different target groups. - We have facilitated the reflection process in initiative groups about gained knowledge, skills and attitude on the chosen theme at all stages of the project (preparation of social performances, international meetings, dissemination activities). - We helped young people who wanted to live abroad after school to become aware of difficulties of living in another country. The project consisted of three international meetings and a deep work on a local level, meeting up with schools and youth organizations and involving the youth into discussing and becoming more aware of the topic, empowering them to become more confident and responsible for their decisions and actions. We feel that all goals were achieved, with the initiative groups having felt a good connection and personal growth through involvement this project, and the feedback from the youth attending the open performances has, too, been positive, for we have stimulated their thoughts on adulthood in a creative and subtle way. The long-term benefits of this project will be seen throughout years thereafter for the youth from both initiative groups and dissemination target groups, as they go through this process of becoming adults later in life. However, it was seen from reflections and discussions that the youth have been deeply touched by this topic and that it has left an impact.