Youth Workers Academy Project (KA2)

Turkey Youth Union Association hosted the last study visit of the “Youth Workers Academy” project between 7-11 June in Istanbul. Within the programme the representatives of the partner organisations from Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Turkey visited 6 NGOs each working on social inclusion with the Deaf, hard of hearing, refugees, lgbti and roma youth. During 4 days of study visit, it was aimed to listen and collect as many good practices as possible applied with/for young people in order to transfer or adapt to our own realities and mention some of them in the toolkit which has been drafted for the use of youth workers. Besides visiting various NGOs, the team also visited Dialogue in the Dark which is a permanent exhibition located in one of the main metro stations in İstanbul, where visitors are guided by blind guides in absolute darkness which pushes them out of their comfort zone orienting to a world without pictures. They also visited Dialogue in Silence exhibition which is another experience in total silence where participants discover non-verbal expression with the help of Deaf and hard of hearing guides and discover openness, empathy and an enhanced power of concentration.

Youth workers academy is an educational strategic partnership to establish a curriculum and toolkits for youth workers on how to deal with youngsters with fever opportunities from 3 different backgrounds: disabilities, socially deprived background with emphasize on refugees and their integration into society and LGBTQI.  Project consists out of 4 international members, Turkey, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia, to empower youth workers to do the social changes in our society. Youth workers often lack skills to deal with youngsters with fever opportunities, especially in local, rural environments. With specific curriculum and toolkits to educate youth workers, we would increase the capability of youth workers to have the right approaches towards youngsters with fever opportunities and find the appropriate ways on how to deal with them to raise their full potential and help them to be more involved in a society. Our aims are to brighten the horizons of youth workers by gaining specific knowledge of how to work with youngsters with fever opportunities and to bring new methods of youth work in youth centers around Slovenia, Turkey, Romania and Croatia. Our goals are to create 3 different curriculum of trainings for youth workers, to transfer good practices from 4 different countries, to visit at least 12 different organizations dealing with youngsters with fever opportunities (3 in each countries), to involve 180 youth workers in 3 pilot trainings (20/training/country) on 3 different topics in each country. One on how to deal with youngsters with disabilities,  one dedicated on how to deal with young people with specific social difficulties (special emphasize on refugees and problematic family background, addictions,…) and one to deal with LGBTQI groups. We will launch the toolkits on-line and off-line and organize 12 dissemination events (3 in each country). We will finish with evaluation meeting with all 4 partners involved in the process. Curriculum and toolkits will be used as a yearly trainings in all organizations to empower youth workers and will be upgraded with other specific groups of youngsters with fever opportunities in the future. One of our priorities aims to professionalize youth workers and to use them as professionals in our work, so not searching for knowledge out of our field, but in the field.