The main literature on the "second-generation" describe them as people having a fractured/fluid identity and feeling multiple belongings. Along with socio-economical factors, that's the main reason why some "second generation" do not feel ‘fit in’ their local community. Still, contrary to their parents, they do tend to talk about their self-identity more openly. PLOTSI - Peer-Learning stOrytelling Techniques for Social Inclusion aims to enhance the skills of +15 youth workers (trainers, educators, mentors, etc.) coming from 5 European organisations that believe in the power of storytelling to foster social inclusion of young people with a migratory background. MemoryLab (BE), University of Malaga (ES), Karpos (EL), Witness Journal (IT), Sirigaita (PT) apply different forms of storytelling (visual, written, oral, digital) to collect memoirs of young people with a migratory background and support them to make their voice heard. PLOTSI focuses on exploring their specific challenges and needs, both pedagogical and technical. It set-up a network with the objective to: (O.1 Self-evaluation) deepen the understanding of their actual strengths and shortcomings, to increase the quality of their work, (O2 Upskilling) improve their intercultural communication skills, digital competencies, storytelling techniques, and educational methods (03 Internationalisation): increase the reach and attractiveness of their courses, creating a European network of organisations able to offer their learners transnational learning opportunities and mobility experience. In 13 months, the strategic partnership combines 2 mutual learning training activities for youth workers with 3 transnational project meeting and 1 open webinar to inspire synergies with fellow organisations. The first training activities (in Brussels) promotes the analysis of the competencies and the gathering good practices, and reinforces participants skills, especially in communication (active listening, cross-cultural) and digital (literacy and social media). The second training activity (in Malaga) strengthens of the competencies analysis, focusing on the pedagogical needs and investigating the potential of audiovisual storytelling (short movies, podcast), and propose the baseline for further collaboration between partners. The activities produce two main outputs: (1) a Competencies Matrix, that support identifies actual and future challenges and opportunity in working with youth with a migratory background. (2) a Community of Practice toolkit, that gather and spread best practices in facilitating social inclusion through creative storytelling. The three transnational project meeting (Athens, Milan, Lisbon) offer the opportunity to partners to build bridges across Europe and set the ground for future joint-application within the next relevant EU funding programmes (Erasmus+, Creative Europe, etc.) Eventually, the open webinar, organised during the Erasmus week 2021, will promote the project while opening the Community of practices to the contribution of fellow organisations and other interested youth workers. By increasing the quality of youth work, PLOTSI's aims to facilitate the social inclusion of young people with a migratory background by creating an alternative school that • promotes their identity empowerment; • encourages them to follow their artistic potential; • supports them with high-quality learning opportunities.
PLOTSI focuses on three main objectives: O.1 Self-evaluation: to explore the actual strengths and shortcomings of each organisation, both at the technical and pedagogical levels. O.2 Upskilling: to improve the individual youth workers’ skills and competencies; intercultural communication skills, digital competencies, storytelling techniques, and educational methods. O.3 Internationalisation: to develop a transnational network of peers willing to learn from each other and work together to increase the quality of youth education initiatives. The O.1 is reflected in the PLOTSI “Competence Matrix”, as a self-evaluation tool for youth workers’ competencies. Filling in the Matrix, teams and individuals can assess their existing skills level, identify potential gaps, and monitor improvements over time. The O.2 is realised by hands-on workshops, masterclasses, discussions, and study visits; those enabled peer learning and exchange of good practices, collected in the PLOTSI “Community of Practice toolkit”. The O.3 is achieved by strengthening the partnership as a network of organisations working to keep improving the quality of their work and to design and implement better transnational learning opportunities and mobility experiences.
As an association made of and working with people with a migratory background, PLOTSI parnters endorses the main literature on the "second-generation", which describes those as people with a fluid identity and feeling multiple belongings. Still, contrary to their parents, young people with a second or third-generation migratory background tend to talk more about their self-identity more openly. With the partners use creative and artistic storytelling to support the personal development and empowerment of young people with a migratory background as well as raise community awareness of the issue. In their daily work, they saw a big need for youth workers to develop new skills and tools to produce initiatives that are supporting social inclusion through creative works. Namely, they identified two needs: (1) to support youth workers to improve their intercultural communication, digital, and pedagogical skills, as part of their lifelong professional development. (2) to bridge formal and non-formal education to increase the quality and recognition of their courses, offering better learning opportunities to young people with a migratory background, which are at higher risk of social exclusion and dropout from the educational system.