Learning Bits from the TC 'Flourishing Youth' about Positive Psychology in Youth Work

© Monica Mano 'Practicing Effective 
Ways of Memorizing Names'

This is a story about a rather unique training course 'Flourishing Youth: Positive Psychology in Youth Work' (under Erasmus+) organised by Anatta Foundation [NL]  that took place at the end of September 2017 in the Arboretum Prandi, located in a charming little Northern Italian town Sale San Giovanni. It gathered together inspiring group of people working with youth, i.e. youth workers, high school teachers, young activists and academics from Germany, Slovenia, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom (more specifically from Wales) and Italy (and a volunteer from Finland), interested to collectively explore the concept of positive psychology, exchange experiences in the youth work, present specific cases and collectively find solutions using positive psychology, create new friendships and contacts for future collaborations and much more. And here is a small overview of this exciting learning journey we took together...

Exploring the Visible and Hidden Gems of Sale San Giovanni

© Marta Podniece 'View on Sale
Castle in Autumn Colours'

Our collective journey of learning started with learning each other's names (through skillfully performed exercises by Sebastian) and exploring the beauties of this little Northern Italian town Sale San Giovanni, which is also known as ' the town of herbs'. Since it was already end of September, we could not evidence the blooming lavender fields, yet we could surely suspect the important presence of herbs in local population's economic life and preserved traditions from the public posters portraying varied species of herbs grown in this area that we learned about on our way to the medieval Sale Fortress. The fortress itself is one of the most visible sightseeing gems of the town whose tiny historical streets we also had a chance to walk. Another most evident gem of the area that we could enjoy and be amazed of everyday while being here was the nature, especially during this season of the year. All the colours of nature, i.e. mix of green, yellow and red in combination with surrounding mountains created an image of a scenic, ever-changing and vivid nature 'carpet', which by itself was quite a view to enjoy. We could explore in detail each colourful piece of this nature 'puzzle' on our everyday 20 minute morning walk to the venue of the training course, namely to the Arboretum Prandi, a rather hidden [in the forest of unique species of trees] gem of the area...

Exploring Positive Psychology... or Where Academic Education Met the Non-Formal

© Monica Mano 'Exploring Positive Psychology'

In comparison to other Erasmus+ projects that I've attended in the past, this training course contained a lot more theoretical information and one might question the usefulness of it in the context of learning by doing principle that is usually highly emphasised in these type of mobility projects, yet I believe it was necessary, since to me it seemed like an attempt to transfer the benefits and good practices from one discipline, i.e. academic to the other, namely non-formal education. In order to do that, I guess you need to know more about what it actually entails and get as many convincing proofs of why it is actually beneficial. I guess, it was especially crucial, since the majority of participants that took part in this training course did not study psychology on a professional level. In that matter, I believe that facilitators, namely Laura W., Jochem, Teuntje and Thomas, greatly succeeded in showing the diverse picture of what positive psychology and its benefits are through different theoretical presentations, research findings, reviews of successful cases, quizzes and short movies. Each 'lecture' was complemented with a wide range of different practical exercises and tests that we had to perform as individually, as in small groups, as well as a whole group, e.g. by using web-based tools to define the collective meaning of 'well-being'. Beside that, we also had separate practical sessions on mindfullness and meditation performed by Thomas and Laura L., and trauma release exercises performed by Finnish volunteer Ysi.

© Sybren Bouwsma 'During Performance of One of the
Creative Exercises in the Context of Resilience Building'

We learned that positive psychology is a branch of psychology that is just barely 20 years old (founded by M. Seligman in 1998) and instead of focusing on understanding and curing pathological features of an individual, emphasises on sustaining and nurturing one's well-being and happiness. These and other concepts such as self-determination theory, trauma and resilience, were the subjects we had a chance to thoroughly review during this training course. All in all, we learned a lot of new methods, tools and techniques that can help individuals find positive qualities in themselves (e.g. in relation to increasing levels of Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence) and how to effectively use these tools, methods and techniques in solving different issues of specific groups of young people. Overall, it was amazing to observe how this 'inter-disciplinary' collaboration and knowledge exchange happened and that it actually worked.

Discussing, Presenting and Creating Solutions for Specific Country Cases... 

Ideas on solving issue of Welsh
delegation using methods and tools
 of positive psychology

Each participant prior to the training course had a task to find and present a specific case they would like to address in the context of the training course and find new solutions to it, using positive psychology. For that matter, national teams gathered together and discussed their individual cases and further picked one that they would present to the whole group. From the country presentations we learned that:

• Spanish delegation would like to address the lack of motivation among Spanish participants (in general) to be more engaged in the activities during international projects. 
• Welsh delegation would like to encourage young people to take more responsibility over their lives instead of heavily relying on support institutions. 
• Dutch delegation would like to address and reduce the 'labelling' issue among youngsters (in scouting community). 
• Portuguese delegation would like to find ways to address homosexuality in school environment and to provide support to homosexual youth. 
• Slovenian delegation would like to address the unfavourable conditions of (highly-educated) young people older that 26 years in regard to obtaining employment (because at the moment it is more profitable for companies to hire students under 26).

After three days of intensive knowledge obtainment about positive psychology and trying out of all the tools and methods that were presented to us, we teamed-up in multicultural teams and worked on developing specific activities and action plans (solutions to the presented country issues) incorporating freshly-learned tools, methods and concepts of positive psychology. All teams presented very interesting solutions and  mostly focused on tools and methods that would either support or directly raise levels of autonomy, relatedness and/or competence in the given target group and as a result lessen or eliminate the issue. Also, participants were abundantly sharing experiences and activities that have worked in other contexts, for example, the team that addressed homosexuality issue in school environment, based on a positive experience from the past of one of the team members, suggested to provide a workshop about sexual orientation performed by an actual LGBT individual that would help not only break certain stereotypes, but create a healthy curiosity and hopefully more awareness on a long-term. Similarly, the idea of creating a reward system in form of promoting companies in Slovenia that hire young people over 26 years of age was inspired by the success of a social campaign from the past that focused on promoting companies that provide paid internships.

And... Having On-going Intercultural Learning and Fun!

© Cristina Faura 'Collectively Performed Sign of
Silence at Midnight'

Although the intercultural learning and exchange was an on-going process that never stopped until the departure of the last participant, there was also one evening of the training course that was specifically dedicated to presenting and sharing cultures, during which participants showed and presented interesting things about their cultures in form of short videos, dance steps, quizzes, songs, sweets and much more. That's how we learned that dancing flamenco is easier than it seems. You just need to pick an imaginary apple from a tree, bite it, throw it on the ground and quickly step on it a few times. We also learned some phrases in Welsh and each got a tea bag with a specific word on it written in Welsh, and we had a task to find a person with the same word and share a tea drinking experience with him/her in the upcoming days. We also sang along the chorus of famous Italian song 'Bella, chao, chao, chao' and tried sweets of all kinds from almost all countries represented at the training course (e.g. Dutch stroopwafels, Welsh cakes, Italian chocolate candies, Spanish cookies, Slovenian chocolate and red wine served in chocolate shots). By the way, did you know... that J.K.Rowling actually got inspired to write her famous fairy tale about a boy with the lightning bolt on his forehead while being in Portugal? ...that Italian breakfast normally consists of only sweet stuff, e.g. fruit, yogurt, cereal, cookies, bread with jam?... that  'Pizza Americana' means having fries on top as an extra? I guess this list is never ending, once you take part in an international activity...

Some Bright Ideas for the Future...

A significant and essential part of the training course also was development of new project ideas that followed after an explanatory session of what Erasmus+ is and the opportunities it provides. Some really great and pretty viable ideas for new projects were developed aiming at, for example, addressing and questioning the existing gender roles and rules, fostering entrepreneurship, meeting LGBTQAI+ community needs of self- and public acceptance, and fostering personal development of young people. All in all, it was a great week of intense learning, sharing, interacting, bonding, cooperating and developing and I believe that the ideas generated and connections established will soon see the sunlight in form of new international projects that make a difference and further the practical use of the knowledge we obtained during this training course!