Clearly Positive Cultures - report

CLEARLY POSITIVE

CULTURES

CLEARLY POSITIVE CULTURES

1-12/09/2014 ÁGUILAS, SPAIN

With the financial support:Organizer:

ABOUT THE TRAINING




Objectives of the Course:

1 To support participants to fight prejudices they have about foreign cultures and to build positive perception of the other cultures

2 To enable participants to make the critical reflection about the stereotypes that they have 3 To find out strategies on how to build positive relationships and intercultural dialogue between young people

from different cultures. 4 To prepare youth workers to work with the youth of the Euro-Med region.

5 To explore tools for understanding and analysing youth and their needs 6 To support youth workers in creation of youth work adequate to the needs of young people.

Methodology of the Course: Methodology of the Training Course were based on the principles and approaches of Non-Formal Education - Holistic approach, learning via experience, Group as a source of Learning. All the “knowledge” elements of the programme were accompanied by exercises for developing skills and work on attitudes on this topic.

AIM: To equip youth workers with the Intercultural Competences to work with young people on breaking

stereotypes about Arab and European Cultures.

ABOUT THE TRAINING




The program was based on the following methodological principles:

• Aquire knowledge by getting inputs from trainers, resource people, peer-participants and oneselve (internal insights)

• Develop skills and attitudes by workshops, practical activities and plenary discussions, during the programme (based on non-formal learning) and in breaks or free time (informal learning)

• Build the program on sharing experience and expertise with trainers, resource people, and peer trainees.

• Give attention to learning processes: provide space for discussions, group feedback conversations and individual daily reflection

Profile of Participants:

Youth Workers and Youth Leaders from 12 Countries - Spain, Morocco, Jordan, Poland, Palestine, Bulgaria, Tunis, Germany, Algeria, Sweden, Egypt, Romania.

DAY 1 - 4TH OF SEPTEMBER

Day 1 of the Training - was arrival day. All participants were arriving to the Training venue - Águilas during the whole day, starting from early morning and the last participants late at the night. To create comfor-table atmosphere organisers suggested outdoor Lunch, that participants who was by that time in the venue can “make” and eat together.


Second day’s objective was to create positive atmosphere, conditions of common work of all participants, that’s way its name was “Group building”. In the morning we started from energetic ice breaks, getting know each other and names games. After that we presented objectives and short history of Clearly Positive Cultures Project. Within explanation of the methodology of the course based on non formal education methods, we put at-tention on learning by doing processes in the group, experimental process of learning and learning based on needs of participants.

In the afternoon participants took part in creative group building process by playing interactive and outdoor game named Geocaching. Participants used Internet and GPS to work in the groups to find caches localized near the place of the training. Their task was to find at least one mentioned cache. Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navi-gate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. There are 2,493,836 active geocaches and over 6 million geocachers worldwide. Participants were divided into 3 groups(originating from different countries). After explaining what is geocaching, started to get to know each other and work in groups in out door activities Steps of the game: 1. Registration for a free Basic Membership. 2. Visit the "Hide & Seek a Cache" page. 3. Enter postal code and click "search." 4. Choose any geocache from the list and click on its name. 5. Enter the coordinates of the geocache into your GPS Device. 6. Use GPS device to assist you in finding the hidden geocache. 7. Sign the logbook and return the geocache to its original location. 8. Share geocaching stories and photos online.

http://www.geocaching.com/membership/register.aspx?type=basic%22%20%5Co%20%22Basic%20Membership

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/default.aspx%22%20%5Co%20%22Hide%20&%20Seek%20a%20Cache

http://www.geocaching.com/membership/register.aspx?type=basic%22%20%5Co%20%22Basic%20Membership

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/default.aspx%22%20%5Co%20%22Hide%20&%20Seek%20a%20Cache





PERSONAL REFLECTION AFTER GEOCACHING

Those questions are to help you to re>lecto n the yesterday experience with Geocaching. Do the interview with your partner, asking all or some of them.

1. ME – FEELINGS -‐ how did I feel during this activity -‐ what made me feel happy/sad, comfortable/uncomfortable -‐

2. ME – TASK -‐ How I approach the implementation of the task? How I wanted to do it? -‐ what was my contribution to do the implementation of the task? -‐ what was more important for me – to complete the task or to enjoy the process?

Why? -‐

3. ME – GROUP -‐ How was I feeling in the group? -‐ What helped me to or what stopped me to be part of the group? -‐ What normally I need to work in the group ef>iciently? -‐ What role I took in this group? Is this normal role for me, did I feel comfortable?

4. ME – SUCCESS/FAILURE -‐ how I reacted when we succeeded / when we realized we failed? -‐ How motivated I was to succeed, why?

5. ME – MY NEEDS -‐ what I personally was missing in this exercise? -‐ What are the factors that help me feel good in the group? -‐ What are the factors that help me work well in the group? -‐ What are the factors that helps me to keep motivation in the group?

* the tool was developed for this activity





Session 2 – VALUES and ABIGALE

With the objective to start talking openly about our values and the way we thing we have proposed to partici-pants the activity called ABIGALE (T-Kit on Intercultural Learning pages 56-57).

In the activity we have sad love story of Abigale and 4 other people who are involved. Participants first indi-vidually and then in the group needs to rank all the people involved from the one who is most guilty to the person who is less guilty in this activity.

SAD LOVE STORY

Abigale loves Tom who lives on the other side of the river. A flood has destroyed all bridges across the river, and has left only one boat afloat. Abigale asks Sinbad, the owner of the boat, to bring her to the other side. Sinbad agrees, but insists that Abigale has to sleep with him in return. Abigale does not know what to do and runs to her mother and asks her what she should do. Her mother tells Abigale that she does not want to interfere with Abigale’s own business. In her desperation Abigale sleeps with Sinbad who, afterwards, brings her across the river. Abigale runs to Tom to happily embrace him and tell him everything that has happened. Tom pushes her away bluntly and Abigale runs away. Not far from Tom’s house, Abigale meets John, Tom’s best friend. She tells everything that has happened to him as well. John hits Tom for what he has done to Abigale and walks away with her.





Session 3 and 4 – Intercultural Learning

The Casino game BARNGA

The game is named after a West African town where the idea of this game was born in the author’s mind after he personally experienced the shock of subtle cross cultural differences which affected the functioning of his task group. The game places participants in situations where the unnoticeable cultural differences sneak up on them right when they feel they understand the rules of the game. At the heart of Barnga’s design is the premise that the cultural differences are often very subtle and can be masked by many obvious similarities. Despite their subtleness, these differences, however, can cause problems in interpersonal relationships and accomplishment of tasks. This premise is very similar to many real life situations where people are often not aware of the differences between the other group and their own group until the differences suddenly sneak upon them.

Resourse: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/interculture/pcat6.htm

CULTURE

The input was compose of the understanding of the concept of culture and the iceberg model has been presented. We were as well exploring what is influencing our culture and the elements like the process of socialization, mass media our own experienced gained during the whole life, subcultures that we belong to, education in gener-al and many other elements. Since there are so many elements that influence our individual culture we cannot make the nationalization of culture, although the place (country) we live in has an influence on the way we are.

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/interculture/pcat6.htm

http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/users/interculture/pcat6.htm





Session 3 and 4 – Intercultural Learning

INTERCULTURAL LEARNING

ICL is not just learning about other cultures, but also learning that are our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are many times, influenced very much by the culture we grew up with. The characteristics of ICL:

PROCES

INVOLVES VERY DEEPLY ROOTED IDEAS

CHALLENGE TO ONE´S IDENTITY

Intercultural Learning Competence can be define as the ability to recognize the cultural differences instead of judging other cultures from our own cultural perspective allowing us to work efficiently in trans-cultural situ-ations or multicultural groups.

2012 Compendium Intercultural Learning - Council of Europe





What MENA thinks about themselves.

Morning session on stereotypes

In order to foster the understanding on the similarities and differences between two cultures that are: Arab and European, we decided to offer participants the tools to further explore it. We have divided to group into two part, the one representing European countries, and second representing the countries from the MENA region. Each of those two groups had a task to make a collage that is representing their own and the other group culture. In this way we got four pictures.

What MENA thinks about Europe


What Europe thinks about themselves What Europe thinks about MENA.

This activity let us open a bit deeper discussion on the topic of stereotypes. We have re>lected on from where we are getting the information, how the in-‐formation is being used and processed by us. We have >inished this exercise with understanding bet-‐ter what is stereotype, using the de>inition of Coun-‐cil of Europe, presented in the Educational Pack:

Session on ICL in the youth work

As a continuation and to close a bit the topic of the intercultural learning, we have organized the group work on the ICL in the youth work. The group was divided into 3 small groups and their task was to brainstorm on what helps participants of the youth work activities to develop the intercultural learning competences.


Intercultural afternoon

The whole afternoon has been dedicated for the participants to re>lect on those type of activities in the international youth project, think how to include the intercultural learning element into this activity and >inally do it. There was no concrete structure, and the guidelines for participants were simple – to self-‐organize their intercultural afternoon, in the way that everyone would be happy and it can serve us as a best practice for our future activities.




“Profile of target group - situation of young people in Euro-Med countries”

Aim of sixth day was to get know profile of the young people, with whom youth workers work daily in their countries. See their needs relating to learning process, problems, worries of everyday life, in-terests and way of spending free time. For this purpose, we used the methods of work in small groups, artistic techniques, World Café met-hod and a sociological tool and the results of studies carried out by questionnaire „On-line survey about young people and their Needs”.

In the morning we started from meetings of Reflexion Groups, which were created in the first day of TC during Geocaching game. We were reflected on learning outcomes of participants, experiences and evaluation on the learning process so far. After that taking in consideration evaluation of previous days, we were looking in 4 small mixed groups conclusions and advices for facilitation of activities with elements of Intercultural Learning.

RECOMMENDATION – INTERCULTURAL NIGHT

Group 1: • More information about the event previously (tasks …) • Time management during the presentations • Being creative and respectfull • Afford the tools and materials needed to do the presentations • Taking into the consideration the personality of the participants while organizing this event

Group 2: • Good preparation to be able to respect time limitation • Be precise and consist (focus on most important things) • Creative and catching • Diverse activity (reach in methods) • Motivated activities • Enthusastic (full of energy) • To be a result of team work • Interactive actions

Group 3: • One night for 1-3 coutnries • Don´t mainstream the point/topics – try to surprise people • Separate arabis and european nights to see the difference • Answer the questions people wanna know • Optional workshops – for example Poland can teach how to cut paper in different shapes • No time limit – it´s people tasks tos ay enought • Wall of ideas topics and questions from poeple • To makethe group of interests – for example first group is cooking togehter, second watching

movies • Speed date (culture date) – 1-2 minutes talking to each other one by one



Group 4: • Express individual opinions in the big group in the organized way • Take the decisión as a group (maybe vote) • Motivate people • Distribute the tasks • Flexible timetable and respect the time • 12 coutnries shouldnt be presented in one night

During the next session “Situation with youth in our country” participants were looking characteris-tics of youth from their local reality first. Divided into groups from the same country(10 groups and 2 individuals), for 40 minutes created the profile of young people from their own country. To help in creation of a profile of youth, they were answering 8 following questions:

Then in the 3 groups, which were representatives of 4 countries (2 of Meda region and 2 from Euro-pe) looking for similarities and differences in the profile of young people from different cultural realities and backgrounds today. Results were presenting in the front of all group:

Participants discovered similarities and differences, which were depending not just from localization or origin of youth, but also of global changing of communication via internet, political situation, wo-rries about future and economical situation.

In the afternoon we took a look on the real situation of youth in our countries by getting known results from short on-line survey “„On-line survey about young people and their Needs”, prepared for youth workers before the training course. It’s available on: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19SfwViAuDIxzKOkK10f_6WOvsUHAL-tOfjVVpGHLdn_E/edit

The survey was easy to fill out on-line and collected basic information about target group of youth workers from partner organizations. It gives youth workers better understanding of a target group and helps adapt and prepare appropriate activities for them. This survey is in English but can be translate by any of youth worker depends from her or his needs. Before the course we collected 48 answers(filled out questionnaires) from youngsters from 12 coun-tries involved in participation of the CPC project. Participants of Training Course CPC were looking for respondents and helping them with fill out surveys, what gave them good preparation in the topic of situation of local youth before meeting in Calarreona.




After having regard to the knowledge of situation of young people, sharing information from our local communities, previous intercultural experiences in the group, second session of afternoon took place activity within World Café Method.

By using this method we were trying to give answers for a vary important question: “What is needed for successful youth work in intercultural environment?”

What is World Café Method?

Drawing on seven integrated design principles, the World Café methodology is a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue. 1) Setting: Create a "special" environment, most often modeled after a café.

2) Welcome and Introduction: The host begins with a warm welcome and an introduction to the World Café process, setting the context, sharing the Cafe Etiquette, and putting participants at ease.

3) Small Group Rounds.

4) Questions: each round is prefaced with a question designed for the specific challenges of youth workers in Euro-Med context. Our question were:

a) How to make all the young people in your activities participating actively?

b) What kind of problems/challenges you can have while running Euro-Arab youth activities?

c) Topics that we should be careful about while working with Euro-Med youth?

d) How to work with the topic of stereotypes?

e) How to ensure the interactions between European and Mediterranean Youth in international youth projects?

f) How can we prepare well for the Arab-Euro Activity(or what is the power of danger pokemon)?

5) Harvest: After the small groups participants were invited to share results from their conversations with the rest of the large group. These results were reflected visually and their photos are presented here:




http://www.theworldcafe.com/principles.html

http://www.theworldcafe.com/principles.html





Morning Session started from the energizer. Participants were asked who would like to participate in the en-ergizer that will help them to become closer and feel connection in the group. All the group members decided to participate and we made energizer “pillow” – there is a pillow that leading person should get read of, in order not to get pillow participants should hug someone, but not more than for 5 seconds, once you are not hugging anybody leading person can give you a pillow.

With this first energizer we presented group to one of the first NFE principles - Voluntary participation. That means that people can participate if it’s their own conscious choice, with clear understanding of the aim of the activ-ity.

Step 2. The second approach presented was active participation, which as well was reflected during first energizer.

Step 3. We made exercise “stick”, The group stands on both sides of a stick and holding their hands like a zipper and holding it up with one finger, then try to let it SLOWLY go to the floor without letting go off the stick. After several tries and strategies group succeeded with the task.

After we had debriefing about learning outcomes for the group from this experience of working together, connected it with real life situations they experienced before and made conclusions for the future. Through this experience we presented another important principle of NFE Learning through experience and learning through the group. As effective tool for this approach we presented to participants Experiential Learning Cycle of Kolb.

Step 4. Other important approach is absence of external evaluation, which means that only participant by himself, can evaluate his own learning, through reflections and debriefings.

Step 5. We started from the exercise Walk in the clouds. All the group stay in two lines facing each other and they should make a safe way to one group member that he can pass through this line without touching the floor. That’s how we experienced another approach Safe environment.

Step 6. We presented to participants picture of man, and together with them discussed what parts of our body are involved in the learning process – brains (knowledge), heart (attitude) and hands (skills) – this is what we call Holistic Approach in NFE, that means that we use not only brains to acquire new knowledge, but also do practical exercises to get practical skills and working with emotions to form attitudes towards topics we are learning about. (Inspiration for this part of the session came from the pub-lication “Handbook for people working with youth groups”)

From the Holistic approach we arrive to the definition of the Competence- as composition of skills, knowledge and attitude, and had short discussion about importance of working on attitude and behaviour via Values and in-ner readiness.

From the concept of competences we moved to the Zones of Learning (Sellinger, 2000).







Second part of the morning were dedicated to self-assessment with the help of the tool “European Portfolio for Youth Leaders and Youth Workers”, published by the Council of Europe:

http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/youth/Resources/Portfolio/Portfolio_en.asp

As training was focused on Intercultural Learning we suggested two func-tions to reflect upon – Empowering young People and Intercultural Dia-logue. First was General Overview of Portfolio and than participants went to reflection group where they were filling it in individually with some support if needed from the trainers.

Afternoon was focused on the Presentation of the New Erasmus+ Pro-gramme and Networking.

Session started from the Presentation of the Erasmus + Programme with the focus on Key Action 1 and Key Ac-tion 2. The biggest interest for participants was EVS and Training and Networking Activities. Presentation was made in interactive way with questions and answers.

(http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/documents/erasmus-plus-programme-guide_en.pdf).

Second half of the afternoon was focused on the future collaboration. We started from the needs analyses, each participant wrote on the post-it personal needs and interests towards cooperation and personal development, after we made mapping with main areas of interests and we got 3 of them, which convert to 3 working groups:

Personal learning mobility opportunities (EVS and Job-Shadowing),

Common Training Course in the continuation of our Project and in cooperation with Meda Countries,

Youth Exchange for Young People form Partners Organisations on the topic of the Intercultural Dia-


http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/documents/erasmus-plus-programme-guide_en.pdf


http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/documents/erasmus-plus-programme-guide_en.pdf





The aim of the last day was to reflect on the course, evaluate learning achievements and plan future steps for im-plementation of the experience participants have got during 7 days of the training. In order to create future steps we star-ted the morning from the creation of the vision of the future, for this we used environment we had - sea and send, partici-pants were asked to create send figures that reflect their vision of the future world they would like to live in. After the creation of the shared vision of the future, each participant had a chance to plan own small steps she/he can do in order to move in the direction of this future, after personal reflection participants shared this steps in the couples, walking along the sea. After the reflection session, all participants came back to the plenary room to reflect on own learning achieve-ments during the TC. Tools we proposed were - learning badges, each participant, using materials we suggested (colour paper, magazines, markers, etc) created as much as they want badges, that they will give for themselves as a reward for competences they developed during the training. we got a lot of learning rewards. Than in order to connect learning achievements with Youth Pass we presented 8 key competences concept, placed on the huge flip chart paper with spare places next to each competence - so participants placed their badges next to the competence they were connected to. The biggest number of the badges were placed next tot the social and learning to learn competences.

Final Evaluation: For the final evaluation we used written evaluation forms - filled in by each participant, and oral evaluation - for this we used Dixit cards. Each participant could choos one or 2 cards that reflected the most his/her own experience during the Training. After that on the big circle each person shared the card and the reasons they have chosen it. All the participants got very positive experience during TC, have discovered and learned a lot about cultures of each other and about Intercultural Learning in general, mostly all the expectations were fulfilled.

Clearly Positive Cultures - report

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