LTTC "COACHING FOR CHANGE Revision"

Historically, young people have faced social exclusion, and the recent economic downturn has prompted high unemployment, which particularly effects the younger generation. However, some disadvantaged groups of young people face exclusion in the longer term for reasons beyond the current crisis. Remaining outside the global labor market has far-reaching consequences – not solely economic. These include a loss of confidence, an undermining of trust and expectations, and an increasing risk of social exclusion and disengagement from society. Apart from the economic crisis there are other issues that affect youth and lead to political crisis. Global threats such as terroristic attacks and armed conflicts caused a huge refugee and migration wave in Europe. These and many other factors stipulate the increase of intolerance, xenophobia, violence, conflicts oriented by cultural fears, numerous stereotypes and prejudices, intercultural misunderstanding, inability to think critically and lack of intercultural competence in general. Young people are more than others affected by those issues, especially being in a situation of current economic crisis. They feel afraid, they are frustrated, they don’t know what to feel and how to react, as a result they become either inactive or join the extremist movements, and they definitely need to be supported in this hard situation by adults, by peers, by educational institutions, by NGOs and by policy makers. We see youth empowerment as an attitudinal, structural and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults. LTTC “COACHING FOR CHANGE Revision” aims at building competences for youth empowerment through coaching techniques in order to address all the mentioned issues and to build a stable and productive co-working platform for educators. We see coaching as an essential youth worker’s skill, as you will be able to use your competences in many youth work areas such as learning for success, employability and entrepreneurship, inspirational leadership, as well as in building soft skills such as efficient communication, self-esteem and networking. We’d like to carry out this project as the revision of TC Coaching for Change (January 29 – February 6, 2016, Yerevan Armenia) as it was very successful and we realized the great need and interest in this topic (we received more than 300 applications) among young people. This LTTC will consist of 2 stages: First 7+2-days TC will take place in Armenia in 28 October – 05 November 2017, and will focus on mastering the skills in coaching, reflection on the practical phase and experimenting with different models, instruments and tools. The second TC will take place in Russia in 19 – 27 May 2018, and will aim at getting the participants acquainted with principles of coaching. After that TC we expect them to try coaching in their local work, and to share the results with us and peer learners during the on-line phase.