ICY Activities for Diverse Youth Groups
[Scroll down for Finnish]
ICY, Intercultural Competence for Youth workers, is a 14-month project (Spring 2019 – Spring 2020) co-funded by the European Union Erasmus+ Programme.
ICY aims to improve social inclusion in youth groups by training youth workers and coaches in intercultural competence.
The four partners (ACSESO from Spain, Changemakerz from the Netherlands, CityPirates from Belgium and HNMKY from Finland) learn from each other to gain best practices in leading youth groups towards cultural awareness. The trainers observe and learn different ways of facilitating social inclusion in the groups.
ICY Toolkit is a compilation of tested activities for diverse youth groups in four categories
a) ice breakers b) energizers c) team building activities d) reflection.
Find the 18 collected activities can be found here in Finnish:
https://pubsecure.lucidpress.com/ICYHARJOITTEET/
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ICY on maaliskuussa 2020 päättynyt Erasmus+ projekti, jossa kehitetään moninaisten ryhmien toimintaa lisäämällä ohjaajien kulttuurienvälistä osaamista ja keräämällä kumppaniorganisaatioiden parhaita käytänteitä harjoituskirjaseen.
Projektin tavoite on lisätä sosiaalista osallisuutta nuorisoryhmissä tukemalla ohjaajien kulttuurisen osaamisen kehittymistä, jotta ohjaajat pystyisivät kohtaamaan erilaisista taustoista tulevia nuoria paremmin ja mahdollistamaan ryhmän toimivuuden.
Kehittäjinä on neljä organisaatiota, ACSESO Espanjasta, Changemakerz Alankomaista, CityPirates Belgiasta ja Helsingin NMKY Suomesta. Kumppanit oppivat toisiltaan parhaita käytänteitä nuorisoryhmien kulttuuritietoiseen ohjaamiseen. Ohjaajat havainnoivat ja oppivat erilaisia menetelmiä sosiaalisen osallisuuden tukemiseen.
ICY harjoitteet on kerätty hankkeen havainnointijaksojen aikana ja niitä on testattu eri kulttuuriympäristöissä. Löydät harjoitteet neljästä kategoriasta: jäänmurtajat, aktivointiharjoitteet, ryhmäyttäminen ja reflektio. Harjoitusmateriaali löytyy suomeksi, englanniksi, ranskaksi, hollanniksi ja espanjaksi.
Sports clubs, NGO's and youth centers are great places for integration and building social bonds. However, if the leaders of these groups are not culturally competent, the groups may become places where racism, discrimination, or biased treatment thrive. To improve social inclusion in youth groups, it is crucial to support the instructors by giving them the skills and methods to facilitate social change. Youth workers, coaches, and instructors and influencers are role-models and leaders in their groups.
There is a clear need for strengthened cultural competence of instructors engaged in leading youth and non-formal learning groups. This is especially true in our current Europe where immigration issues continue to be an important
focus and discussion point. According to local European authorities and the UN reports, the immigrant population is growing all over Europe. This poses challenges but also provides a good opportunity to implement cultural competence programs for instructors of non-formal clubs and groups. (more data on migration on UN site (http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/data/estimates2/estimates17.shtml)
Intercultural Competence for Youth workers (ICY) is an exchange of practices project that focuses on developing youth workers' intercultural competence in order to improve social inclusion in their groups. The four culturally different partners (Helsingin NMKY from Finland, ACSESO from Spain, Changemakerz from the Netherlands and City Pirates from Belgium) that use physical or non-formal education as tools for social inclusion learn from each other to gain best practices in leading youth groups towards cultural awareness.
Research shows that multicultural groups can either be very highly effective or the least effective, and the difference is in how well they are managed. Directing groups towards acceptance of diversity starts with the team leader’s understanding his/her own prejudices, stereotypes, and values that affect the way s/he interacts with people from other cultures. This is more often overlooked in preference to the multitude of ready-made material on how to run groups
Roles:
Helsingin NMKY: coordinator, MOK trainer and consultation of cultural competence, hosting 1 transnational event and one job shadowing event, reporting and overall leadership, collecting tools and overseeing the compilation of toolkit
ACSESO: compilation and creation of the Toolkit material, local arrangements , timetable and budget control, Virtual Exchange arrangements, hosting one transnational event and one job shadowing event, collecting and testing tools, reporting
City Pirates: hosting one large training event for youth workers from all partner organizations, collecting and testing tools, arranging translations, reporting, hosting 1 transnational meeting and one job shadowing event, local arrangements
Changemakerz: collecting and testing tools, arranging translations, reporting, hosting 1 transnational meeting and one job shadowing event, local arrangements
ICY paves the way for social inclusion in the groups the participants lead. This goal is accomplished by predisposing the partners to different ways of leading the group and facilitating social inclusion. All partner organizations reflect on their own practices as well as observe other trainers to find new perspective into leading diverse groups. Partners conduct job shadowing activities to observe different training methods and test these observations in their own groups. These best practices are compiled into one Toolkit, which is later shared with the networks.
The expected results are:
1) trained instructors from each partner organization: an increased level of intercultural competence and cultural knowledge within partner organizations and among individual instructors. One culturally competent instructor has a potential of not only giving a great experience to the participants in their activities, but can also influence and mentor other coaches more efficiently. The project is expecting to see increased European collaboration that supports intercultural competence, exchange of knowledge and personal progress of the participants and their organizations.
2) With the toolkit, the instructors in each partner organization has a ready-made and tested set of activities to be used with the groups.
3) Main outcome is increased intercultural competence and cultural self-awareness of the instructors, which will then in turn affect the cohesion of the youth groups.
The main result is increased intercultural competence and cultural self-awareness of the instructors, which will be measured by IDI-measuring tool in the beginning and at the end of the project.
Additionally, the feedback given by groups and trainers alike will form a large part of the evaluation. There will be numerical goals (number of participants, number of tools shared and number of visits).
1) Collecting, testing and evaluating best practices and activities
2) Sharing information and activities across Europe: training our own trainers
3) Revising the already learned activities: reinforcing learning
4) Toolkit publication and taking it as part of onboarding in all partner organizations
The project’s target groups are youth organizations that use physical and non-formal learning activities partly or fully in their program structure. The activities of the project are meant for youth workers, coaches and instructors of the partner organizations and their collaborators. The young people in these instructors’ groups, however, are the final beneficiaries of the project: as the intercultural skills of the instructor develop further, the instructors can start leading their diverse groups, support individuals within the groups and facilitate integration better.