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OUT with the burnout - prevention and self-care for Youth Workers

2019-3-BG01-KA105-0779452019Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: BG|SK|CY · Grant: €17,016
New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training coursesHealth and wellbeingYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Objectives

The project wants to gain a new understanding of the importance of youth work and the challenges that youth workers face. Often, these challenges have a negative impact on their self-esteem and have negative consequences. The project proceeds from the fact that most youth workers are required to have a multidisciplinary profile in order to meet the diverse needs of young people - educational, emotional, physical, social and more. In this regard, the youth worker often takes on different roles and relies on experience and intuition to provide the most appropriate support. Not many youth workers have dedicated their activities to at-risk youth, young people with disabilities or those living in difficult conditions. This in turn requires a great deal of emotional resources and specific skills. Often, youth workers perform their duties without fixed hours and even more often they have to pursue other professions. Not many youth workers are volunteers or members of non-profit organizations. All this complicates work-life balance and leads to feelings of injustice and personal disappointment. The deepening of these trends leads to professional burnout, the so-called burnout, which in turn leads to a loss of motivation, apathy and poor quality of work. The dynamics of youth workers and their attitude to many and many different youth causes put them in a situation of high expectations and tension. This is also compounded by the uncertainty in their work, which is most often secured by the implementation of projects. Therefore, the capacity of youth workers depends not only on their participation in specialized training, but also in the timely and competent care of their mental health and stress control. Like many people, youth workers are not well aware of the symptoms of occupational burnout syndrome, have no skills for prevention and intervention, and are often unaware of the consequences for themselves and others. In response to this shortfall, the OUT with the burnout - prevention and self-care for youth workers project offers innovative solutions. The project will create a methodology for early recognition of signs of stress and burnout, raising self-awareness, ways to apply self-help and mutual assistance techniques and opportunities to reduce the negative effects. The project has the following objectives: 1. Improving the quality and sustainability of youth work by creating a mechanism for preventing the professional burnout of youth workers and striking a work-life balance. 2. Capacity building for youth workers to identify signs of burnout and develop self-management and coping skills. 3. Encouraging participants to take responsible and caring for their mental health and build skills to support their colleagues by developing a specialized guide. 4. Improving the quality of youth work by creating conditions for retaining and motivating youth workers. 5. Building a sustainable partnership between participants and sharing good practices.

Project partners (3)