17-23/5/2015- Training Course: IN BETWEEN - Supporting youngsters in transition childhood to adulthood (Reichenau a.d. Rax, Austria)

Training course for youth workers, social workers and others who are working with young people in transition from childhood to adult and who are asking themselves how to support young people in a more holistic way.
• What does it mean to be adult?
• What does childhood mean?
• How does the journey from childhood to adulthood work?
• How do I know when my youngsters are in this journey?
• What questions can help me to support the transition of the young people I´m working with?
• What are the limits of youth work in supporting transition?

During the course we would like to deal with the bio - psycho - social - spiritual aspects of the changes / personal development young people go through while moving from childhood to adulthood. We would like to look at our current practices and discover ways to incorporate more consciously all these aspects in our work. Based on the sharing of our previous personal and professional experiences we would like to build up youth workers confidence and understanding of these processes to be more prepared to deal with such changes while working with young people.
We have decided to talk about transition from childhood to adulthood as a way of looking at those young people who are no longer children - and often not yet perceived as adults.
We want to work on incorporating the transition process of teenagers and the teenagers themselves in society in order to make the process more productive, exciting, lively and advantageous for their own lives and for society as a whole.

Approach - Methodology:
We will combine different types of experiential activities, discussions and sharing of experiences – including, for example, rites of passage/ rituals deriving from different cultures.

Our objectives:
a) Create a common understanding about what is meant by “transition from childhood to adulthood”.
b) Draw attention to emerging issues that we may come across when working with young people in transition (like ambiguity, our being role models, identity…)
c) Reflect on the way we deal with the 4 dimensions (bio - psycho - social - spiritual) of personal development in our work.
d) Offer space to discover and share tools, ways, activities, methods… to support young people in their transitions.
e) Explore what changes we can make in our work as youth workers to support young people in transition processes.

The Training is not directly related to:
Although they may be a part of the emerging conversations based on the work of the participants we will not deal in depth with the following issues:
• Entrepreneurship, employability, citizenship, participation
• Housing, job seeking and other practical support to the transition from living with parents to living independently
• Psychotherapy, psychological support in developmental psychology or emergence processes
• General “recipes” that can be used in whatever the context, country or situation

The team of this TC are not psychotherapists or psychologists – but we are more than happy to share our own experiences coming from working with young people in transition phases.

Target group:
People working with young people: youth workers, social workers and youth leaders who are working with young people in transition between childhood and adulthood.

Group size: 24

Participant Profile:
We are hoping that participants who attend will:
• Be keen to learn from each other during discussions or peer exchange.
• Be willing to share the learning outcomes of the TC in their organizations and local communities.
• Be able to communicate and work in English (which will be the working language for the whole training course).
• Be able to attend the whole duration of the training course.

Working language: English

Πηγή: http: www.salto-youth.net