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Connecting and improving peer intervention in nigh..
Connecting and improving peer intervention in nightlife settings on EU level
Start date: May 1, 2015,
End date: Oct 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
Peer workers are an important part of youth work in nightlife prevention for young people, because they can approach their peers more easily than adult experts, beside that they are often partygoers themselves and know different nightlife environments and dynamics well. With appropriate knowledge and skills they can contribute an important part to qualitative changes on different levels of nightlife. On the other hand, nightlife, parties and music festivals are an important part of life of young people in general. It's a setting where they can socialize and grow their social capital, relax, get new experiences and also be creative and express themselves in different ways (creating music, performing visual arts, dancing, ...). But it's also a setting related to variety of risks, connected with alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, intoxicated driving, risky environment (for example high temperature in the club). We see this risks also as an opportunity for young people to act responsibly in order to reduce risks, encourage them to be critical to unsafe party environments and develop solidarity and helping skills towards other young people in trouble. Intervention in nightlife settings is also a field where different profession profiles meet and share their expertise and knowledge (for example medicine staff, social workers and pedagogues, youth workers, chemists, psychologists), therefore there are a lot of opportunities for peer workers to get some insight in their work and non-formal knowledge and experience on those topics, which can be useful for their future personal and professional development. The international aspect of nightlife is also important, as we also meet people from other countries during our work (Erasmus students, tourists, international visitors of festivals and parties, ...). And on the other hand we see international networking as an opportunity to make an effective experience, knowledge and good practice exchange. In our experience, international cooperation always brought fresh ideas and different perspectives into our organisation and helped us improve our work.
Objectives of the project:
- to create peers' community in order to exchange and share information, knowledge and experience for peer workers and youth work trainers, discuss opportunities for joint projects - proposals, progress and continuation of projects once funding runs out, share opportunities and coordinate international field work on festivals and parties.
- to represent peer work in nightlife settings as important part of youth work in general.
Participants:
- peer workers: peer project group (7 peer representors, from each partner organisation, 20 - 30 included in active project participation in their organisations, 25 attending mobility activity)
- peer coordinator project group (7 peer project coordinators, one from each participating organisation),
Methodology:
- peer active participation,
- learning by doing,
- team work: face-to-face and on-line team work,
- workshops and lectures,
- working with digital media,
- e-learning.
Activities:
- Project management and administration,
- Communication and coordination between partners (via Skype and e-mails),
- Communication and coordination of peer participation in each partner organization (between peers and between peers and their coordinator),
- Preparing learning material and learning activities for peers,
- Making video educational and info material: peers will get appropriate knowledge and support to make short videos with educational and informational content.
- Developing intelectual output (PINS e-platform) for peer communication, representation if peer project and work, exchange of good practise and knowledge, ...
- Blended mobility for young people (international training and intervention on BOOM festival).
- Project and activities evaluation,
- Dissemination of project results.
Results and impact:
- established community of peer workers in nightlife settings (PINS), based on a web platform with following content:
- e-communication tool for youth workers (peers) to communicate, organize and evaluate international peer interventions;
- educational videos and other learning material;
- reports from peers intervention, exchange of updated information about prevalence and patterns of drug use in nightlife settings and emergencies related to that topic;
- collection of ideas for improving intervention on the international, national and local level (special decoration, innovative harm reduction material, ...);
- information about different peer projects in peer work in general in nightlife settings.
- to enhanced recognition of gained competencies during peer work in nightlife settings (for example: managing crisis situation, communication skills, solidarity, team work, first aid...);
- good practice, knowledge and resources exchange between peer workers, peer trainers and coordinators on international level.