Conflict Transformation in Youth Work (CTWY) aimed at improving the quality of youth work by equipping youth workers with conflict transformation skills. The need to handle conflicts is on the foreground at the moment, and we are taking the chance to address this need specifically in youth work. We recognize that for youth organizations developing conflict competences is crucial overall youth work. Everydays youth work involves: inclusion of diversity, with all the struggles connected to it; growth and the process of testing boundaries; engagement, motivation and their challenges; and complex processes of cooperation among different people, just to name a few. No wonder that conflicts happen: they are rather part of the job than an exception. Yet, a sort of stigma persists around them, so when conflicts happen they are experienced as a block, a failure, they bring about emotions like shame and mistrust, and very rarely they are seen as an interesting opportunity for reorganisation, for stronger connections, for needed change, inclusion and integration, learning and growth. We believe that learning to deal with conflicts constructively, with less anxiety and more tools, is a game changer. The BASIC CONCEPT of our project was what Chalmers Brothers calls “Carefrontation”: putting together care and confrontation means giving difficult messages and having challenging dialogues in a way that the relationship can get stronger or more healthy. One element was of course the content: what to say, how to express. But equally important is the context: how to get to such a dialogue? How to prepare a competent intervention? We provided the youth workers skills connected to both aspects: CONTENT AND CONTEXT, so they can handle conflict situations creating growth and learning in their target groups and teams. OBJECTIVES OF OUR PROJECT: -To equip participating youth workers with competences to transform conflicts with their target groups into learning opportunities -To set a playground where youth workers can explore several approaches to handle conflicts, identifying options that are really applicable to their own personality and context - To organize a PV where, together with our partners, we create an implementation plan for after the PDA -To spread competent conflict handling methods in all partner organizations and on a bigger scale, through the implementation phase -To evaluate the project and its impact through questionnaires and follow up activities. NEEDS OF YOUTH WORKERS, according to what we collected from our partners: NAVIGATING CONFLICTS with/within TARGET GROUPS Our partners expressed the need to have at their disposal more immediately applicable skills and techniques, and new perspectives to help them deal with conflicts with less guilt, shame and fear, and more openness towards learning opportunities. -Learn to make competent interventions in conflict situations -Having concrete skills to apply when conflicts arise or escalate, to manage emotions -Learn to create the context for difficult dialogues to happen -Handling challenging youth in a way that creates learning for them -Creating cohesion around rules -Going beyond simplistic recipes, or right/wrong ideas, and learn to handle complexity TO GROW AS AN ORGANIZATION Our target for this project was small/medium organizations, possibly relatively young, as we desire to support them in their growth and in the improvement of their youth work, with our experience. Coherently with this focus, we noticed that the majority of our partners shared needs connected to their own capacity to organize work. They were mentioning conflict dynamics connected to managing deadlines, dividing roles and tasks, communicating within teams and managing volunteers. The need we identify here were: -to learn to take conflict situations as opportunities to organize work in a more competent way -to divide roles and tasks taking into consideration personal needs and skills and resources -to create, clarify and negotiate rules allowing teams to identify with them.