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The Art of Development

2019-3-LT02-KA105-0066012019Youth mobilityfinalizedGood practice
Countries: LT|IT|PL|LV|ES|UK · Grant: €14,794
Creativity and cultureYouth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Objectives

Personal development in youth work is a philosophy that includes many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills and develop people's capacity to contribute to youth work in their communities. Youth educators as well as the learners find an opportunity to explore and examine their own values, prepare for important life choices through the process of learning and self-exploration. It can also help the learners to explore their strengths and weaknesses, by experiencing success, failure, adventure, risk-taking and uncertainty: everything in a secure facilitated process. Furthermore, to help them to gain self-confidence in making decisions and be accountable for the results. In this project "The Art of Development" we concentrated on the self-development through body movement combined with coaching methods as a tool for reflection. Why movement? Because movement is a basic form of communication that provides us with opportunities for socialization, the development and building of community. It also reveals the experience of expressing our aliveness and our innermost thoughts and feelings. Movement is our first form of communication. Body language does not lie. Therefore, youth worker, using the techniques of body movement, can understand what is going on in the life of youngster. As an individual develops creative abilities and attitudes through movement and dance, they can be incorporated into everyday life. Creating comfort through movement is a natural way towards an introduction to relaxed and genuine relationships in a group, and encouragement of creative thinking, behavior and communication in everyday life. We chose coaching as a tool for reflection due to its nature and philosophy: as it does not seek to give people answers to their questions, but often helps them to reach their own conclusions. The ultimate goal of coaching is for individuals to become their own coaches. Thus, combining body movement techniques together with powerful coaching questioning techniques, we seeked to reach our aim and objectives. The aim of the project was to improve the quality of how youth educators work: using body movement as a tool for personal development and using the benefits of coaching to reflect, absorb and purify the information. The objectives that helped to reach the aim were: • to give participants the tools of self-development through body movement; • to learn how to use coaching methods for the reflection; • to stimulate self-development process of youth workers; • to develop professional skills of youth workers and increase their efficiency; • to share the best practice in experimental learning; • to share the tools of body movement, art and theater therefore youth workers could use it in the future; • to improve the quality of local and international youth work; • to create new local and international projects and partnerships; • to build meaningful relations and future cooperation on the basis of this project under Erasmus+; With help of self- development techniques, youth workers had the chance to improve the way they work with youth: body movement is universal tool as most of the people not only have a body but also are able to move at least some parts of it. Therefore, this technique can help to reach youngsters from different social background, bring dialogue between different people and encourage tolerance. Body movement techniques help to see clearly how everyone is similar, that there are no or little difference between ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. Therefore, it is a tool that will help youth workers to reach youngsters who are hard to reach and hopefully, will attract them to the educational community rather than joining other groups that might be radical. The results of the project are: a booklet with methods created by participants in the training course and follow up activities implemented by participants.

Project partners (6)