In all European Member States there are telephone or Internet-based crisis helplines for people in need, with suicidal intentions, diverse mental health problems and many life-limiting problems. The task of crisis services is to accompany those people, to provide contact or relationship, to relieve them emotionally, to give orientation and, if necessary, to absorb suicidal crises. Most crisis services work with volunteers who are carefully prepared for this responsible activity for months. According to the International Association of Telephone Emergency Services (IFOTES), there are about 350 crisis centers in Europe with over 20,000 volunteers providing emergency assistance day and night in over 4 million telephone calls and over 100.000 internet contacts. 2-3 thousand volunteers have to be trained every year to keep the crisis helpline around the clock. The recruitment of volunteers is complex and costly and ongoing training is needed. The core competence for crisis support is listening. Against this background, 9 partners from 6 EU Member States have joined in an interdisciplinary consortium with the aim to expand the existing knowledge about listening skills more individually, to study the architecture of listening, to measure the competences of human beings and their ability to heart-listen, and to give new attitudes about the technique and art of competent listening. The Strategic Partnership consist of 6 Telephone Emergency Services (TES) from DE, IT, HU, FR, NL, ES, one research center specialised in emotional and mental health (DE), a training provider and consultancy in the field of social skills, skills assessment and vocational guidance (IT) and a developer of digital platform solutions (DE). The main outcome of the project will be the MonaLiSa testing and learning instrument which allows people to measure their individual listening skills competence (questionnaire) and they will get support to improve listening by using individually suggested learning nuggets on the base of the test. The learning- instrument will be created as a Web-Application that can be connected to different Webpages of institutes which promote listening skills and emotional support in Europe and it will be translated in seven languages (English, German, Italian, Hungarian, French, Spanish, Dutch). It will be an open digital educational resource that enables lifelong learning in the field of soft skill competences. It will help people to develop individual competences in listening, social competence and dialogue competence internationally. The proposal aims at making lifelong learning and mobility a reality, by creating flexible learning pathways and addressing adult learners which can be involved at different stage of their life encouraging international mobility and networking. The proposal will thus pave the way to the EU 2020 target of raising adult education attainment, by making it more attractive with new cross-sectoral subject topics of current international relevance and by encouraging CSO capacity building and the acquisition of key competences through innovative adult education. This project is christened by the acronym “MonaLiSa”: Measurement of nowadays advanced Listening-Skills attitudes. Mona Lisa smiles as an emotionally balanced and Listening-Skills competent person, she is internationally known and this year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonorado da Vinci, who spent several months doing mathematical and physical research in libraries and among scholars. Here he had been appointed as a consultant regarding some architectural difficulties in the construction of a cathedral. With the studies on body proportions and faces and anatomical studies, he wanted to "get to know the inside of the person" exactly. With the Erasmus+ project MonaLiSa we want to study the architecture of listening to measure the competences of human being and it’s ability to heart-listen, and we want to give new attitudes about the technique and art of competent listening.
The aim of the project was to develop a questionnaire for self-assessment of one's own listening skills and to design a training tool based on this questionnaire to improve individual listening skills. This self-assessment test and the so-called learning nuggets were to be made available online in all languages of the project partners (D,E,S,I,F,NL,HU). The online tool is available free of charge and can be easily integrated into any website. We expect that voluntary organisations and NGOs that have a need for listening skills in order to fulfil their commitment and mission as well as possible will integrate this tool into their website and thus make the listening skills available to many interested people in their environment. The aim of the consortium is to highlight the relevance of listening skills for social interaction across Europe in different languages and to stimulate an intensive learning-based examination of one's own listening skills.The web-Tool is intended to become an open digital educational resource that enables lifelong learning in the field of soft skill competences. It will help people to develop individual competences in listening, social competence and dialogue competence internationally.
In many European member states, there are telephone or Internet-based crisis services for people in distress, with suicidal intent, various mental health problems and many life-limiting problems. The task of the crisis services is to accompany these people, to provide them with contact or a relationship, to relieve them emotionally, to provide orientation and, if necessary, to absorb suicidal crises. Most crisis services work with volunteers who are carefully prepared over a period of months for this responsible activity. According to the International Association of Telephone Emergency Services (IFOTES), there are about 350 crisis centers in Europe with over 20,000 volunteers providing emergency assistance day and night with over 4 million phone calls and over 100,000 internet contacts. Every year 2-3 thousand volunteers need to be trained to maintain the emergency service around the clock. Recruiting volunteers is complex and costly, and ongoing training is required. The core competency for crisis response is listening. Against this background, 8 partners from 5 EU Member States have joined together in an interdisciplinary consortium to expand existing knowledge on listening skills more individually, to study the architecture of listening, to measure people's competencies and their ability to listen with their hearts, and to provide new attitudes towards the technique and art of competent listening.