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Between the Lines – Autobiography as a Tool in Youth Work

2025-3-DE04-KA153-YOU-0003687032025Mobility of youth workersongoing
Countries: DE|ES|HU|MK|TR|PT|RO · Grant: €42,221
Physical and mental health, well-beingKey competences developmentNew learning and teaching methods and approaches

Objectives

Today’s youth face serious challenges in developing key skills such as identity formation, gaining self-confidence, and building emotional resilience due to the rapidly changing social, economic, and digital conditions. Therefore, youth workers need innovative methods that help young people explore their inner worlds, make sense of their experiences, and express themselves. Especially for youth workers working with vulnerable groups, creating safe and supportive spaces where young people can tell their own stories is of critical importance for inclusion, personal empowerment, and psychological resilience. This training course aims to contribute to the integration of the autobiographical method into youth work, enabling young people to explore their personal past, recognize their emotions, and reframe their experiences. Autobiography is not only a method of narrating one’s past, but also a powerful learning process that creates awareness and change by rewriting one’s story. When supported by storytelling, art, and digital tools, it enhances young people’s self-confidence and strengthens their social participation. Scientific research also supports this approach. McAdams (2001) emphasizes that structuring life stories is a fundamental part of identity formation. Bruner (1990) notes that narrative is the way humans make sense of the world in learning processes. Studies by Singer et al. (2013) show that autobiographical narration positively affects self-regulation systems in the brain. Furthermore, UNESCO’s 2022 Youth Report highlights the critical role of creative forms of expression in developing young people’s social cohesion and active citizenship skills. The project aims to equip youth workers with the ability to apply these methods. Participants will both confront their own life experiences and share what they have learned with young people in their countries. This process will strengthen their empathy, intercultural awareness, creative expression, and non-formal learning skills. For youth workers dealing with challenges such as migration, exclusion, and psychological vulnerability, key themes will include ethical principles, creating safe sharing environments, and providing emotional support. The training process will use non-formal education methods such as experiential learning, creative writing, digital storytelling, art therapy, and role-playing. Participants will engage in self-assessment each day by focusing on different themes, actively participating through individual and group applications. By the end of the training, they will gain the ability to develop their own autobiographical training modules. Thus, when they return to their countries, they will be able to organize workshops that enhance young people’s self-awareness, support inclusion, and contribute to social integration. General Objective: To ensure that youth workers gain the capacity to support young people’s self-awareness, expression skills, and psychological resilience through creative and inclusive methods based on autobiography. Specific Objectives: 1. To enable youth workers to learn creative training techniques based on the autobiographical method. 2. To support participants in confronting their own personal stories and developing emotional awareness. 3. To teach methods that encourage young people to express themselves through storytelling, art, and digital tools. 4. To increase knowledge and skills for creating safe and ethical sharing environments. 5. To ensure that participants develop autobiographical training modules that can be applied to their own youth groups at the end of the project.

Project partners (7)