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Developing Life Skills in Young People Through Theatre
Start date: May 1, 2016, End date: Mar 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Europe’s younger generation, as a whole, has today become almost a socially disadvantaged group. Crushed by unemployment and by an increasingly competitive job market, they often also lack those kind of skills that such market requests and the schooling system seems unable to provide.We must also consider that the label 'young' is substantiated by an incredibly complex and heterogeneous cultural diversity. A diversification that reflects the stratification of our multi-ethnic society: there are the so-called 'second generation immigrants', born in Europe but never completely integrated, often confined to a third dimension, in between the culture of their country of origin and the culture of the land that received their parents; there are also young people grew up in disadvantaged urban areas, marginalized by a centre where everything (work, training, opportunities) moves and happens too quickly for them to catch the chance. But is in these contexts that are often hidden potential creativity and the possibility to raise in the youngsters positive attitudes to the society. To do that, it’s necessary to work through youth workers, using an holistic and non-formal educational methodology, which looks at the potential of the person, and works on a level of non-formal learning.A recent report from the European Commission identifies in life skills one of the keys to winning the individual challenges imposed by our contemporary society.The WHO defines life skills as “abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life”, these abilities are learnt through everyday life experience in different contexts: work, leisure, volunteering, travel, formal and non formal education. The role of educators is to offer tools that lead the development of such skills, supporting the process of reflection, of increasing the self awareness, of exploration of new possibilities, the process of communication and sharing with others, in two words the process of 'learning to learn'.The project proposes a training course for youth workers on the use of the methodologies of theater and clowning for the development of life skills, methodologies which are extraordinarily effective for the emergence of skills such as creativity, empathy, critical thinking, coping with stress, trauma and loss, self-awareness, communication and interpersonal skills.The project meets the needs of youth workers to learn new methodologies to bring out life skills in different educational contexts. Theatrical methodology in fact intervenes with the group and the individual, producing significant results not only in terms of socialization and stimulation of capacity, but also the cultural and critic thought development, of personality, contributing to individual autonomy, at socio-cultural and psycho-emotional level. Youth workers will apply the learnt methodologies in the working context with youngsters.The project is organised in a only one activity: a training course for 30 youth workers who work in young field. It will be held in Pantin, near to Paris.The training course will last six days, and it is structured in more steps:- participants presentation and team building;- information and knowledge on the thematic of the project and the diverse fields where it could be found;- implementation of methodologies;- detailed study on the use of European certification tools.Coordinator will be in charge of planning and realizing the training activities; partners will send participants.The training course is structured in four phases:A - Start of the project;B - Selection and preparation of the participants;C - Implementation training course;D – Closure of project.Training will impact on knowledge of contents in the group of participants, increasing their competencies in the work with youngster and in the different contexts they belong to. Participants will be able to programme and organise theatre workshop using the clowning methodology for the development of life skills, or they can apply the acquired methodologies for other goals and in other educational activities. This will impact on the quality and efficiency of their work.Project partners will increase the potential expertise of the organization in offering educational programs for young people, using non-formal and informal educational methodologies. Impact at national level will be mainly on the spread and dissemination of methodologies among associations, institution, etc., which work with young people. Partner organizations will impact on other associations by sharing outcomes results, thanks to national networks.At European and international level, project will impact on the spreading of a unique European non formal approach to education in different countries. This will enforce the process of sharing and applying European criteria on the topic of education.
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