- - - “This course changed my life on different levels. I discovered that with passion, knowledge and creativity, you can change the world. I now have incredible tools to work with adolescents on rites of passage.” - Maria Luisa Giordano, Italy - - - “The choice and importance of the theme is exactly what is needed for youth workers nowadays.” - Sanita Siliņa, Latvia - - - “The training course affected me to a greater extent than I had imagined it would, both personally and professionally. The activities were of great quality and very considerate; a wonderful - and I would even say a perfect - example of non-formal education activity for youth workers.” - Dace Dora Zaime, Greece - - - The overall objective of ‘Stepping into Adulthood: Rites of Passage Tools for Youth Workers’ was to mine the wisdom of ancient cultural practice and empower a new generation of youth workers with the tools, techniques and attitudes to support young people’s journeys of self-discovery. An important overarching goal of the project was that our participants develop confidently into the ‘elders’ of the future. We introduced them to our holistic educational model and returned them to their home communities with the confidence to awaken young people to a richer, more engaged life. Together with our partner organisations, we reflected on the needs of European youth, and the overwhelming consensus was that the primary needs of youth workers are to: - Be creatively inspired in the ‘how’ of youth work - Tackle social alienation and disorientation among the young - Overcome a lack of confidence to initiate activities Our objectives, as agreed with our partner organisations, were to create a project that: 1. Provided participants with a memorable learning experience through which they feel empowered and inspired; equipped them with new and useful skills with which to more effectively serve their communities, promoting creative leadership practices and leading to enhanced self-confidence and employability. 2. Enhanced understanding of the maturation process and what it demands at a personal and collective level; identified the key points of initiation in a young person’s life, involved participants in a personal learning journey for their own lives and transmitted this learning to their home communities. 3. Introduced participants to the tools and techniques of rites of passage so that they can more effectively mentor young people in their home communities. 4. Equipped youth workers with learning to learn competences - lifelong learning, shared resource centres, increased initiative, project management and communication skills, language competences and applied leadership, promoting foreign language competences and creating participatory learning experiences using non-formal education practices. 5. Promoted the values of peace and cooperation that underpin European culture, fostered intercultural understanding and a stronger sense of EU citizenship and identity, and helped a new generation of youth workers develop these values through creative outreach activities and non-formal education practices. 6. Developed a programme of creative activities to be carried out by participants on return to their home countries; supported these activities with ongoing discussions and tool-sharing and laid the foundations for future collaborations in the field of youth self-development. Participants mastered competences that are useful for the job market and committed to a learning journey that equipped them as confident youth workers who can lead applied teaching practices. These benefits have directly filtered back to our partner organisations. As vital members of their organisations, the participants’ learning journey has benefited their colleagues and co-workers, and the subsequent projects are creating a ripple effect among communities across Europe. This project brought together a diverse range of organisations with the specific objective of developing organisations’ international collaborative and project delivery capacity. It supported the promotion of European values in accordance with Article 2 of the Treaty on the EU and contributed to Erasmus+ KA1 objectives, building directly on objectives of the Erasmus+ Programme and EU Youth Strategy (2019-2027). It was a plan for empowerment, with the purpose of guiding young people towards confident and effective maturity, enabling them to meet the challenges they face, trigger positive change, and promote a cohesive Europe. We created a positive, dynamic learning environment in which participants were stretched and engaged whilst enjoying themselves. An important subsidiary goal of the project was to promote European citizenship - and a key component was, therefore, to simply support positive social interactions across national boundaries, leading to a feeling of integration and connectedness.