21-28/8/2017
Orebro, Sweden
Training Course
Coach´ em: Supporting young people through coaching
The training course ‘Coach´ em: Supporting young people through coaching’, which has taken place in Orebro of Sweden in the period of 20-28/08/2017, with 28 youngsters from Netherlands, Cyprus, Estonia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Turkey and Romania, was aiming not only to spread information about new coaching tools/ techniques to assist youngsters in the process of becoming active in the labor market, but also to promote, along with the youngsters, the theory of coaching and its adaptability to the context of youth work. Through motivating and stimulating games, group work & role play, discussions, street actions (school interviews and art exhibitions) and presentations, each one of the participants developed their competences in encouraging other young people to approach a specific goal of their own and they implemented guidance and support to achieve it through coaching them. This program, by laying emphasis to several living effects (personal, mental and side effects), has achieved the sensitization of the youngsters as future youth workers or coaches.
In the period of 8 days on working with 28 participants from different cultures, everyone worked in one group sharing good practices from each country in order to decrease youth unemployment and then evaluate the new practices and tools with local communities about coaching and youth lack of employment opportunities. After the division of each multicultural group, a title -a subject, more specifically- was given, according to the topic of the workshop. The teams had to manage their time in order to present, in their preferable way (presentation, theater, dialogue etc.), their conclusion and their observations. Using this method, participants had the opportunity to improve their skills in management, be disciplined in timetables, increase their tolerance to others opinion in the terms of teamwork, invent new ways of promoting their ideas especially about different working situations and understand in depth the topic of youth support measures as they shared different national experiences. In addition they learned how to adapt coaching tools and techniques to feet the frame of youth work and NEET youth as it is hard to be specified as a passive group of unemployment. The whole project has provided space to create a variety of projects about this harmful phenomenon along with providing European awareness.
Concerning the cooperation between teams, teambuilding activities in this project have broadened our thinking and limited our selfishness. We have learned to appreciate the interaction with people and respect their opinion. Essential part in this competence has played the innovative idea (of the coordinators- Karin Wouda and Fredrik Carl Wouda), which suggested that dinner would take place in their own house, something that increased the connectivity between the countries and people felt like home and made them all a big family. Each night was full of table and Swedish games, dance, laughs and multicultural food. Moreover, as for the intercultural night, through this exposure to different culture, participants had the privilege to enter another world, research, learn and present. This exposure was beneficial, since it has provided us with the maturity to accept and love other countries. This competence was enhanced by the communicative barriers, which was leading participants to find a common language. This barrier was not a stumbling stone in our communication, since our activities were giving the opportunity to the youngsters to express their opinions through other methods such as theater, art, songs etc.
This project, accomplished to bring 28 youngsters together with same purpose, enhancing their awareness, which will altered their perspective in life.
Each one of us can make the change and support the others, starting from their selves!
