Wholeheartedly (WH) was a project based on two pillars: conflict transformation and storytelling. Through equipping youth workers with skills connected to these two pillars, our aim was to improve the quality of youth work. WHY CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION Everydays youth work involves conflicts: inclusion of diversity, with all the struggles connected to it; growth and the process of testing boundaries; engagement, motivation and their challenges; complex processes of cooperation among different people, just to name a few. No wonder that conflicts happen: they are part of the job rather 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 reorganization, 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. Despite the necessary distinction between the phenomenon of violence and war, and the natural occurrence of interpersonal conflicts that intrinsically belong to youth work, one aspect seems to be extremely relevant in both cases: the ability to deconstruct enemy images. Through our work we contributed to the creation of conflict competence in this sense: transforming conflicts means to find constructive strategies for challenging situations; to orient the dialogue towards growth, eorganization, and inclusion; to cultivate the ability to keep seeing the person beyond any enemy image. WHY STORYTELLING Stories are ancient carriers of wisdom: they are used in every culture to teach without preaching, to open perspectives without forcing, to create connections without pressure, to suggest possible evolutions instead of unilateral solutions. As such, they are a precious tool for conflict transformation: they are a playful, empathetic, non threatening way to face conflicts involving all the senses, and bringing a holistic view and different perspectives. They even connect rational and emotional areas of our brains, helping to harmonize these aspects that often contribute to disconnection in conflicts. Working on the identification with different characters, symbols, metaphors and points of view the perception of events and concepts can become more nuanced and open. The ideas of right and wrong, winners and losers and enemies and allies can therefore be gently challenged, opening the pathways for more inclusive solutions. NEEDS OF YOUTH WORKERS, according to what we collected from our partners: -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 -Facing exclusion and discrimination creating inclusion through giving voice -Going beyond simplistic recipes, or right/wrong ideas, and learn to handle complexity 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 explored storytelling as an approach to handle conflicts, experimenting methods that are applicable to their own personality and context - To organize a PV where, together with our partners, we created an implementation plan for after the PDA -To spread competent conflict handling and storytelling 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 CONNECTED TO YOUTH WORK, according to what we collected from our partners: Our partners expressed the need to have at their disposal more immediately applicable skills and new perspectives to help them deal with conflicts with less guilt, shame and fear, and more openness towards learning opportunities and organization. More specifically interests and learning focus we collected were: -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 -Going beyond simplistic recipes, enemy images and right/wrong ideas, and learn to handle complexity. We also checked with our partners their experience with storytelling as a methodology, and what specific needs could be connected to it.