We wanted to strengthen youth workers' knowledge about violence prevention and to move from awarenessraising campaigns to daily practice. We wanted to develop a training program for youth workers on violence prevention tools and methods and how to use them daily. By this we hoped to strengthened the ability to identify, act and protect young people from harmful relationships. By offering a training program with webinars and two trainings we wanted to raise the participant's competence and understanding of youth violence. The focus was on different forms of violence and how young people are affected in their relationships. This includes understanding the impact of social media and how it is used to groom and threaten young people. The trainings will increased the understanding and importance of gender norms, masculinity norms, sexual norms, and equality, aiming to develop an understanding of how this is linked to violence and increase their competence and understanding of sexual violence. The participants gained new knowledge and practical skills to use in their work with young people. The trainings aimed to increase the understanding and importance of gender norms, sexual norms and equality and how this is linked to violence.
Violence in the relationship of young people is a subject that has been neglected in research, politics, policy documents and strategies. Addressing topics such as youth violence, relationship, and domestic violence can be challenging for youth workers. We identified the need to explore different ways to initiate dialogue with youth and raise awareness of violence and how they can identify acts of violence. There are many youth centres, where staff can reach young people but these are difficult subjects to address. We identified the need to develop tools to support informal learning. Working through creative and culture have so far proven successful and we needed more tools to reach out and initiate conversations about norms, values, machoism and violence. There was a lack of methods in the daily work at the same time as there is a high motivation to learn and try. It was for these reasons important to try out and then collect methods used in youth work to raise awareness among young people about violence prevention, tools to help initiate dialogue around sensitive issues, tools to challenge gender norms and values etc.