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Natural storytelling

2019-3-NL02-KA105-0026522019Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: NL|FI|EE|PT|SE|IT|ES · Grant: €31,148.6
Disabilities - special needsHealth and wellbeingCreativity and culture

Objectives

The Erasmus+ Youth Exchange has been organised for young people who stutter from seven different European countries. Young people who stutter (YPWS) have a very strong need to be with peers who stutter once in a while, instead of being among non-stammering people like in everyday life, leading sometimes to a feeling of exclusion. Stuttering peers understand each other and know how it is to be confronted with a speech disability every day and in every aspect of your life. The experiences of previous projects for YPWS only was that the participants felt much safer, accepted, less shame and experience less social anxiety to be in a group then in their daily lives. These conditions make it possible for YPWS to open up, self-explore and self-develop. In our experience participants, in these conditions, are able to learn more from each others' cultures, to broaden their horizons and to be encouraged and activated. In a world café session during a previous YE in 2019 the participants stated their idea to organise an intercultural youth exchange focusing on storytelling and speaking in public. If you would ask a YPWS in advance to speak in public for an unknown group for a lot of them that would be a very terrifying thing. But by doing it in an informal way and with positive feedback it can be a very valuable experience. We will present storytelling also in an international context and look for the cultural differences about it. The main goal was to achieve a "Natural" way to tell story, show and experience how fun it is to share your personal story and experiences, and doing that in a natural environment, hence the theme ‘Natural Storytelling’. Next to speaking we also encouraged performing with music and arts to express yourself. The topic of this exchange is especially interesting to PWS as they could go beyond their speech disability, go out of their comfort zone, learn new informal ways of communicating, increase their intercultural understanding and extend their self-imposed limits in communication. The original OBJECTIVES of the youth exchange 'Natural Storytelling' were: -to enhance participants' competences in storytelling, and especially non-verbal communication and presentation skills as a stimulus to enhance participants' self-esteem, self-acceptance, to increase participants’ sense of initiative, foster social inclusion in their local communities and society at large and become inspiring examples to their national/local peers facing similar challenges; -to provide participants an intercultural learning opportunity to improve their competences in intercultural dialogue, to deepen their understanding and knowledge of the situation their European peers encounter and to establish an informal European peer support network. -To improve participant’s foreign language skills, enhance participants’ knowledge of cultural diversity and European citizenship. -To establish sustainable partnerships among project partners organisations in order to increase the internationalization of their youth work. -To enhance participants’ knowledge of Erasmus+ Program, its Key Actions and encourage development of new projects and initiatives under Erasmus+ Program. By reaching all these objectives we created chances for YPWS with fewer opportunities by empowering them in an international setting. We believe the youth exchange has met several expected outcomes of E+, as it supports the participants in getting more knowledge, skills and competences to improve their personal development and their involvement in society. Our project promoted their social inclusion, enhanced their employability, increased their sense of initiative and self-empowerment and promoted an active participation in society. Our project contributed to the E+ KA1 youth objective to enhance the quality and international level of our partners' youth activities and improved their foreign language competences as the working language for all during the entire project was English. For none of the partner organisation this is their mother tongue. In the dissemination of the results of our project we focused on the general public, stakeholders in the field of stuttering and on young people who stutter (‘peers’). In that way we also raised more awareness for the possibilities of the EU, the EU values and showed that stuttering does not have to hold you back to be active in society and in sharing your story.

Project partners (7)