During the past years, our organisation has gained lots of experiences in organising and participating in different local and international youth projects, and we at AID, are glad to participate in a training course called, Psychological First Aid for Youth Workers”. The project’s goal is to equip youth work professionals and youth leaders with a basic knowledge and set of skills in psychology.
The partners that are included to that training course have different experiences and various backgrounds which gives a very colourful palette to the project. Our partners have worked enthusiastically with youngsters and gathered lots of experiences for many years. The target groups of them are very various: they include youngsters from different age groups, from kids to young adults, people with fewer opportunities and different obstacles, LGBT+ people, refugees, etc. The members of the other organisations are also different, many of them are youth workers, scientists, researchers or professional caregivers and some of them are very experienced volunteers. The NGOs that were chosen to be partners, use different non-formal methods and topics for their everyday work such as arts, dance, active citizenship, democratic values, intercultural competences, which will be interesting to combine on the project.
We are happy to give to our memebrs a chance to widen their horizons for psychology and to know how to take care of themselves mentally, understand psychological processes better and implement these new tools in their everyday youth work. By the end of the project week, their empathy will develop. Furthermore, they will understand stress, anxiety, emotions and behaviours better, we will also introduce the concept of mindfulness. They will be richer with some communication skills, such as non-violent and assertive communication and active listening. They will also know how to manage conflicts better and have a better understanding on extreme situations regarding mental health and more importantly, they will gain some skills to handle them. They will acquire some new methods connected to creativity (arts, dancing) and physical activities, as well, all this to help the mental health of their own and use these while working with youngsters.
The continuous sharing of experiences and ideas will help the participants to discover new perspectives on youth work, e.g. how to deal with different youth groups and with the help of the professional trainers, they will understand what are the responsibilities and limitations of youth workers. By the end of the training, they will acquire a new mindset to improve their youth work using new tools and knowledge.
The project will take place in Hungary between 19 – 28 April 2019. The target group is European youth professionals and youth leaders above the age of 18 ( 31 participants (including the trainers) from Hungary, the United Kingdom, Italy, Estonia, Bulgaria, FYR Macedonia, Greece, Malta and Germany). We would like to provide a chance for them to widen their horizons, gain new skills and share their best practises with each other. A team of international trainers will help them to reach the goals of the project and facilitate them throughout the week.
