YOUTH WORKERS ACROSS COMPLEXITY - Third edition

We are LOOKING FOR YOUTH WORKERS (educators, teachers, trainers) who are more than 25 years old and WHO ACTUALLY WORK IN THE EDUCATIONAL FIELD. Three partecipants for each partners.
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INTRODUCTION
Working with the youngsters has always meant to work hard for the construction of the future. In front of phenomenons that strongly characterize our era, such as climate changes, economical crisis, migrant fluxes that keep growing, as well as in front of an escalation of violence, of a politic always more distant from citizen's needs... Which kind of scenarios do we have in front of us nowadays?
Working today with the youngsters means to face challenges that does not only regard the anxiety and the uncertainty due to their phase in life cycle, but means also to face challenges linked to socially caused disadvantages in an historical moment in which the malaise becomes mistrust and impotence, as also becomes disintegration, intolerance and violence.
Which kind of contribution may the youth workers, involved in non formal education contexts, give to the construction of new meaningful horizons and to the construction of new social citizenship models, both inspired to nonviolence values?
Which courses of action could be appropriate to create contexts that promote a growth autonomous and respectful of differences in an intercultural world?
Urgency force us to choose simplified solutions, often merely to contain and answer to emergency, but that don't consider the quality of contexts we are living in, so that these solutions only put a patch and postpone problems.
How can the theory of complexity help us to develop coherent visions and practices, appropriate to world fast changes? Which kind of learnings are suitable for live in more and more heterogeneous contexts?
During the seminar we will explore, through games and non formal education activities, these questions guided from/following a systemic and ecological approach, non-violence orientated.

GOALS
The main goals of the training are:
- to create a context of knowledge, exchange, reflection among youth workers operating in different local contexts on ideas, practices and issues related to their profession and to their social role;
- to create a space for experiment new educational practices to increase youth workers expertise, so that they can be able to intervene in a conscious and flexible way in their non formal education contexts;
- to train to a nonviolent culture and to active citizenship;
- to deepen ideas and intervention ways in intercultural contexts;
- to open to an interpretative view of reality that consider and respect its complexity.

APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY
The training course will follow a systemic and ecological approach, nonviolence orientated.
The training course will be organized with the “training method”
The core of this method is the pair “game-defriefing”
We use games as main tool for the creation of relations and learning because it is intrinsically a non-violent tool.
The debriefing is the subsequent moment, in which feelings, experiences and conflicts happened during the game are considered and recognized, to increase a cognitive process that may reveal new aspects, incisives on a formative level.
During the course some authors and titles will be proposed, as well as some texts on educational issues will be read and discussed among the group.
Moreover, some field trials will be proposed: moments in which participants will give themselves the challenge to experiment some educative activities with the supervision of the trainers and with a subsequent discussion among the group.
The course foresees the creation of a Wiki space, as a tool to share experiences, to keep contact among participants and to supervise the follow up.