Camino+

Mindfulness and meditation are increasingly popular practices, yet, not mainstreamed within youth work peace education. Even though the current youth work practices are very beneficial for young people, they do need to evolve in order to answer to a context increasingly marked by rising prejudices and misunderstanding of others' identity and beliefs, generating an ungrounded fear of others. The energy of youth workers is more than needed to actively lobby for peace in seek for a constant social peaceful progress, not only by cultivating their practical skills, but also by growing their inner peace and peacebuilding skills. 

Through this project, we aim to entice the youth work community at the European and each national level, to adopt mindfulness practices in working with their target groups. While mindfulness could be considered as a lifestyle and hence a broad concept, we will focus on the practice of meditation together with outdoor non-formal methods to foster the inner and outer peace-building skills of youth workers.

Hence, Camino+ will be a hike-pilgrimage journey for youth workers to experience inner peace methods coupled with hands-on practices of conflict management and intercultural dialogue, ready to be applied with their target groups in their local communities. 

Within the intersection of the themes approached by this project: mindfulness, peace-building, outdoor education, and intercultural dialogue. The symbolism and nature of this hike-pilgrimage, will allow us to experience these 4 dimensions together, fostering the learning experience of the participants. The training course will hence, provide a unique opportunity for youth workers to connect with each other, and to learn how to be mindful and conscious at professional and personal levels.

We will address the following specific objectives:

O1. Entice 30 youth workers around Europe to adopt and multiply inner peace practices, aiming to evolve youth work peace education as pillar soft skills for peace builders.

O2. Introduce the embodied peace building method, and explore its adaptation to youth work situations.

O3. Foster efficient leadership in peace building local activities and empower youth workers to address conflict management.

O4. Link inner peace practices together with outdoor education to develop innovative, playful and creative methods applicable to young people.

O5. Offer a space to develop and exchange ideas and practices on peace building and intercultural dialogue, and contribute to strengthening peace in participants' communities.