Intercultural Action Competence Tool: "Intercultural Encounters All a Youth Worker needs to InterAct"

Aims of the tool

All forms of international youth mobility inherently involve intercultural communication, which, in turn, contributes to the development of intercultural action competence (IAC). In the youth field, intercultural learning takes place in non-formal settings and often in an implicit way. To be used consciously, IAC needs to be integrated into youth work concepts.

To achieve that the partners of InterACT project developed a Web- App that encourages participants in international youth mobilities to understand, reflect, practice, and validate their experiences, the handbook Intercultural Encounters. The Handbook has been created to serve two main goals:

1. to streamline the utilization of the App by youth workers, enabling them to efficiently incorporate it into intercultural learning events and environments.

2. to provide youth workers with a curated collection of tools, games, and best practices, all validated, to help them integrate the concept of Intercultural Action Competence into their mobility projects, regardless of the project's main topic of interest. Importantly, these resources are designed to be time-efficient and not detract from the primary project goals.

Description of the tool

The Handbook explains the basic elements relevant to understanding the concepts of culture, interculturality, critical events in intercultural encounters and finally IAC. It also contains a collection of examples of how relevant learning modulescan be integrated into youth mobility projects as well as practical non formal methods that can easily be implemented with youngsters to foster intercultural competences. Each chapter concludes with a short competence validation for the reader.