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Steps on the Wheel
Start date: Feb 1, 2016, End date: Oct 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

In 2014 and 2015 Dreams for Life has been involved, as coordinating and/or partner organization in different international projects (trainings, youth exchanges etc.) that were tackling youth issues/challenges. We noticed that the projects had good intentions, but some things were missing, and the real needs of youth were not met. Projects couldn't overcome a certain point between mediocre and great results. This made us look more into this situation and after a 360 search, we captured the main issue, which became the main problem addressed by our project: The youth workers have low results and impact upon young people personal and professional development. From our analysis we concluded that the main problem has the following direct causes:-Youth workers have limited competences regarding deep and powerful educational/developmental approaches.-Many youth workers have a limited personal and professional vision upon their work with young people and lifelong mission. -Many youth workers lack transferability techniques and the usage of new educational concepts, tools and methods is limited.-Many youth workers have a project based approach which is limited and short term oriented.From this analysis we build our project, called "Steps on the Wheel", which AIMS TO INCREASE THE CAPACITY OF YOUTH WORKERS TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE RESULTS AND POWERFUL IMPACT ON PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOUTH.The project SMART objectives are:1.Developing competences that enable 27 youth workers to work with youth on complex personal challenges, thus enabling them to reach their full potential.2.Building and strengthening personal and professional vision, mission and values of 27 youth workers in order to act as responsible members of the world wide community for protecting the Earth and supporting authentic youth development.3.Developing the transferability and innovation capacities of 27 youth workers in order to use and adapt new educational concepts, tools and methods in their own working environments. 4.Increasing the strategic thinking of 27 youth workers in order to create long-term interventions for personal and professional development of young people.We will involve in our project participants who are over 21 years old, have at least 2 years of experience in youth work, participated in at least 2 international mobilities and have one of the following roles: youth workers, youth leaders, educational and career counselors, teachers, general educators, trainers, mentors, coaches, volunteers coordinator. One condition is that the people under these roles should work directly and constantly with young people. The group involved in the mobility is structured in 3 categories: the participants (27), the trainers (4), the support persons (2), in total 33 persons from 13 partner organizations. The project is called "Steps on the Wheel" because it is connected with a complex concept, the "Wheel of Life or the Medicine Wheel". The Wheel is a developmental tool which combines elements of psychology, holistic human development, nature, symbolism etc. used throughout the centuries by indigenous cultures. Our approach is innovative because there are very few youth workers who know and use the concept. The Wheel is create for youth development, with tasks and methods which can activate the full potential. We believe the Wheel is an excellent tool for addressing specific topic, such as employability, participation, active citizenship, environment protection, inclusion and many more. The Wheel represents the foundation of the course on top of which are placed specific methods, tools and activities which create bigger impact upon youth. Among these methods and activities are: group games for team building, atmospheric games, group discussions, therapeutic practices, mirroring, solution focused therapy, music therapy, nature observation, wandering in nature, rituals, ceremonies, working with symbols, Hero's Journey, building a traditional oven and sweat lodge, solo night, transferability methods, action planning, open space, reflection groups, presentations, peer to peer learning, community service, journaling etc.The project will create the following results:-27 transferability plans and 27 action plans; 4 weeks of individual mentorship; more than 40 non-formal learning methods (experienced during the course) will be available to 13 organizations; for Dreams for Life: two day dissemination seminar; collaboration with 15 local NGOs; one Handbook for eco-centric youth work; we expect and plan to develop with some of the participating organizations: 1 youth exchange, 1 seminar and 1 strategic partnership etc. Generated outcomes:-The youth workers have a higher efficacy and efficiency in their activities with young people; increased personal leadership; their professional paths and careers will flourish and they will expand their career opportunities; the youth workers’ capacity to innovate will grow, higher life vision.
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