CURRICULUM FOR YOUTH WORKERS: Capacity building for the empowerment and social integration of vulnerable girls

Aims of the tool

Main aim of the Curriculum is to present different, innovative approaches of work and activities in order to support girls’ personal and social development. Providing girls-only spaces doesn’t mean that mixed work is unimportant; it can help complement mixed-sex groups by giving girls the confidence to express things openly and try youth projects in the first place.

Description of the tool

Outside common socializing contexts, vulnerable girls are generally "intercepted" by care services offering assistance to disadvantaged groups, i.e. socio-educational and health services, foster homes, social enterprises, religious communities. Most of the time, however, programs are carried out with interventions addressing the needs of excluded youngsters in general. Specific single-sex necessities are in many cases overshadowed, if not completely ignored, often as a result of poor funding or absent operational guidelines. Youth workers in particular often lack upto-date knowledge and methodologies to deal with specifically “girl issues”, but also to engage in deeper discourses exploring gender equity, autonomy and relationship, empowerment, sexuality, independence, violence against women; but also community, culture and identity. Drawing on the findings of the qualitative and comparative social study on the risk of exclusion faced by adolescent girls in Europe (“Stories of fragilities”, PR1), combined with knowledge of partner organisations and associated partners, the international team of the SPACE4US project has produced a curriculum of blended learning to help youth workers improving their skills in creating and using experiential educational tools.

The Curriculum thus represents a learning pathway comprising:
Module 1. Why does gender matter? Module 1 includes the theoretical approach behind the project. Here definitions of empowerment and insights about the importance of empowering young women are discussed, integrated with reflections about gender equality and intercultural relations. This module also highlights the potential for informal feminist education/activities to foster collective empowerment and social transformation.
Module 2: What is “blended experiential learning”: concepts and methodologies.
The aim of this Module is to understand the requirements and mechanisms of this approach that combines learning by doing activities with e-learning pedagogical methods. Module 3: Group Activities: Toolkit of activities of blended-experiential learning.
Designing activities of blended-experiential learning for adolescent girls. Youth workers are a fundamental part of effective programs, yet often little information is available about the practical aspects of developing a successful, coherent path of informal learning, specifically targeted on girls, that features inclusive (peer-to-peer) pathways of disadvantaged groups with their peers experiencing less hardships. Designed to be practical and user-friendly,
Module 3 includes: • insights from good practices and experiences, • monitoring and evaluation tools, models for sustainability. • it is also accompanied by the Toolkit of activities of blended-experiential learning (Project Result 3), which includes a total of 27 concrete examples of activities ready to be implemented.
Module 4: The Online Platform and its Social Communication Tool. It explores all the functionalities and tools of the platform, highlighting the importance of building a safe-space online (the SCT), different from common widespread social networks, where girls can meet and ask for advice.