Resilience and adaptation: how can we help young people acquire these skills?
The growing path youth have to walk through has never been easy for anybody: the world around them changes quickly and their inner world is changing fast, too! Furthermore, some of them are also facing some cultural and social issues and this claims for an action to strengthen their resilience to help them growing as active, responsible and happy citizens.
On February 3rd and 4th, during the kick off meeting of PAClife project (co-funded by Erasmus+ programme), project partners have first met in Cheltenham (UK) to define the guidelines and the main objective the project aims to achieve in the next two years: building resilience among low-skilled and low-qualified migrant and disadvantaged young people so as to help them adapting to new and possibly hard situations. Hence, the development of some life skills has been regarded as fundamental to gain independence and face with positivity the challenges young people face every day in their personal growth path.
These life skills, such as co-operation, communication and initiative skills, problem solving and critical thinking, are transferable skills that can be applied in various life domains such as work, family and personal well-being. It is widely accepted that physical and cultural activities, including play, dance and sport, can help develop a range of useful life skills, for example: the ability to meet deadlines and/or challenges, personal and collective goal setting, the ability to cope with success and failure, team working and the ability to receive and apply feedback.
The main output will consist in the development and pilot implementation of a training tool for the building of life skills for low-skilled/low-qualified migrant and disadvantaged young people based on an innovative methodological approach resulting from partners’ desk researches, that will be carried out in the upcoming months. This will enable young people to develop social and civic capacities through their involvement in physical and cultural activities such as sport and play.
During the project’s lifespan, an event to train trainers in the use of the tools with young people will take place. Once the training is completed, partners will pilot the course with young people in their own
countries. The young people will be then supported to undertake volunteer placements in the community working within settings to maximise the skills they have acquired working with children utilising physical and cultural activities. This work will take place during May-September 2021.
The availability of the training in English (as well as Danish, Greek, Italian and Hungarian) will facilitate the use of this tool by other organisations providing support to migrant and disadvantaged young people in other EU countries.
About the project
PAClife - Physical and Cultural Activity for Lifeskills Development is a project cofunded by Eramsus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership for youth, Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices.
Partners
- UNIVERSITY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE LBG (UK, coordinator);
- Play Gloucestershire Rogers (UK);
- Személyközpontú Oktatásért Alapítvány (HU);
- KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU (GR);
- CESIE (IT);
- CLAVIS sprog & competence (DK);