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Vitamin C booster: Constructive Communication for Combating Conflicts

2022-3-CZ01-KA153-YOU-0000925992022Mobility of youth workersfinalized
Countries: CZ|UA|AM|MD|GE|RO|PT|DE|JO|ES · Grant: €32,592
Prevention of conflicts, post-conflict rehabilitationKey competences developmentQuality and innovation of youth work

Objectives

“Vitamin C booster” was the training course for youth/social workers, devoted to the most important and crucial skills (key competences) of the XXI century, which are Critical thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration, and exploring their applicability in youth/social work and community development in general. The main topics of the project were сonstructive communication and conflict management. We aimed at improving communication skills of the participants by revealing the principles of constructive communication, linking those with efficient conflict management and, in this way, contributing to community development and peace building. Conflict is a collision of interests or points of views, misunderstanding and, technically, result of “wrong” communication, errors in communication. So the objectives and logical structure of the project were built the following way: Throughout the training, particularly, with the help of simulations, we moved from practice to debriefing and awareness which were crucial to come to some theoretical inputs and support and therefore, skills development. During the training we revealed the significance of communication, its nature, aspects (perceptive, communicative and interactive), kinds (verbal,non-verbal and visual), effectiveness and problems; - developed communicative competence and skills of participants, which are crucial and necessary for youth/social workers and trainers; - revealed the tight interrelation between problems in communication and emergence and escalation of conflicts; - linked constructive communication with efficient conflict mediation, management and resolution; -determined and explore the nature of conflict, its types, reasons and ways to mediate, manage and resolve it; -developed conflict management and mediation skills; - created and developed new tools (through focusing on simulations and role-plays), aimed at the development of communication and conflict mediation, management and resolution. It is highly important to emphasize that the created tools have a great practical value and are already used by the participating organizations and direct participants. Since it is shared in free access, it will also be used by youth/social workers in a wider sense for conflict mediation, management and resolution activities. So, as planned, it is contributing to the community development on local, regional and national levels, which altogether will significantly increase the impact of the projects on direct participants, participating organizations, other NGOs and local communities; Addressing the needs of the participating organizations was another objective: - to develop self-reflection, awareness and other key competences of participants and key staff; - to exchange experience and establish new partnerships with youth organizations from other countries. In this way, the project tackled the needs of participating organizations, which were - to develop their staff key competence and communication skills for efficiently addressing the needs of the communities and local society for constructive and non-violent communication, general awareness rise, community development and peace building. The main practical outcome of the project is the toolkit (crafted mostly focusing on simulations and role-plays), aimed to reveal the importance and significance of communication, to reveal the nature of conflict, to raise awareness, to develop communication and conflict management and mediation competences and skills. This toolkit is already used in the follow-up workshops, activities and initiatives by the direct participants and participating organizations but, as well, it is shared outside of participating organizations in social networks and other web-resources. The direct participants developed their communicative key competence and skills and the participating organizations detected some of the main conflicts in their communities and outline their solutions, based on the experience gained by their staff during the project. The project was organized in Armenia, so it was a sad, but bright example of protracted international conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan around Nagorno-Karabakh region, so the participants were able to communicate with Armenians affected by the conflict as well. Other EaP partners are also involved into long-lasting geopolitical conflicts: i.e., Georgia with Abkhazia and Ossetia regions, Moldova with Transnistria region, Ukraine with Crimea and Donbass regions. We believe that the only way to escape the conflicts is education, the ability to communicate efficiently and constructively, to promote diversity and inclusion and this project appears to be extremely relevant for all the participating organizations and the participants.

Project partners (10)