UNDER MY SKIN - Milestones for youth workers’ wellbeing

The Training Course ‘UNDER MY SKIN - Milestones for youth workers’ wellbeing’ (UMS) is an experiential response to some spread and palese side effects of youth work. The stress encountered in youth work  comes from difficult human situations of target groups, but also from often unsustainable working conditions. Often youth workers are not necessarily able to deal with all issues, conflicts, pain and challenges they bump into, but they may learn competencies of wellbeing, personal development, soft skills, emotional intelligence and body awareness to be better equipped handling them.

Youth work is not always fun as it might seem: Youth workers suffer emotional stress due to the challenging context they work in and burnout is one possible turn out that includes ‘turnover, absenteeism, a reduction in the quality of services, numerous physical and psychological disorders, and a disruption in interpersonal relations’. Burnout is certainly an extreme condition in general, and before reaching the pick, 'emotional problems' and 'body disconnection' are cores of youth suffering that can be worked out and managed. We all know how pandemic affected education and people working in it. In the this TC we aim at working this out,  from emotional and somatic point of view.

With UMS, 21 participants from 7 organisations and countries located in Italy, Estonia, France,  Poland, Croatia, Spain and Turkey, will reach the objectives to learn a set of theories, methodologies and methods they can apply in their usual work and grow their competencies as youth workers. They will also boost wellbeing and keep balanced in adversity of their professional practice with their coworkers and beneficiaries. So, the TC will frame youth workers in the role of leaders and challenge their leadership according to emotional & somatic intelligence, through kinaesthetic learning. For that, emotional intelligence is a domain of respected, effective, smart, successful and dynamic leaders.

By exploring the 5 elementals of emotional intelligence suitable for leaders, 1. Self-awareness (Knowing one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, goals and their impact on others), 2. Self-regulation (Controlling or redirecting disruptive emotions and impulses), 3. Motivation (Being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement), 4. Empathy (Considering others’ feelings, especially when making decisions) and 5. Social Skills (Managing relationships to move people in desired directions), participants will explore emotional intelIigence using somatic awareness, estimating the physical body as a domain of learning, change, and transformation and understanding  consciousness [as] a global phenomenon that occurs everywhere in the body, and not simply in our brains.

All of this makes of UMS a relevant TC to be implemented now for the first time and then empowered, adjusted, improved and re-edited again. Another relevant point to underline is that in UMS youth workers are here empowered to take self-care and are envisioned as leaders, needing to be great example for the talks they need to walk with their target groups. 

It is also foreseen as a peer2peer platform for pursuing the value of ‘good’ and the principle of ‘sharing it’. UMS wants to empower youth workers to avoid to reach burnout as well as create a counter narrative on it - which is mentioned by all means and media as nowaday main emotional issue - working on the unpleasant and hard to take aspects of youth work without the need of medicalising it or labelling with social and media assumptions. UMS intends to focus on all challenges that result in side effects for youth workers, not focusing on the problem/s (that also vary in each context and for each person) but on solutions. 

We'll work things out through our bodies and emotions, see the magic beyond pain, sorrow and anger. We'll be into nature as well as into ourselves, while being interconnected with others, spotting out what serves us the most and how we can support our peers, while being supported. 

The participants we expect for this TC are youth workers, including wannabes, that have:
- High motivation for improving their working style in terms of soft-skills;
- At least a minimal effective experience of work or volunteering in education of youth;

 - At least good level of English;
- The will of committing in an intensive TC, which will not foresee a huge amount of free time;
- A concrete possibility of developing follow-ups and dissemination of project results in their actual or future career.