ARTYS- Using drama based youth work for psychosocial support of young people with fewer opportunities

<< Background >>We applied for the project as the result of mapped needs of our partners and lack of ETS competence development for drama based youth work in terms of psycho-social support of young people with fewer opportunities where youth workers could reflect which competences they need to develop for drama based youth work and psycho-social support of young people with fewer opportunities to provide better activities for them. The needs which were mapped internally (through desk research and small questionnaire) came from practices of organizations in the consortium in direct work with young people with fewer opportunities and lack of possible plan for systemic advocacy towards recognizing non-formal education and drama based youth work as experiential way for personal and social development of young people with fewer opportunities, especially now after the COVID19 impact when all activities are back offline. Also, there is a lack of programes which are using drama based youth work as a methodology in working with young people in general where this project should inspire different organizations and stakeholders to use it in direct work because of the holistic impact of positive development of youngsters.<< Objectives >>General aim:increasing quality of youth work through using drama methodologies for psychosocial support of young people with fewer opportunities.Specific aims:Strengthening youth workers for using drama based youth work for psychosocial support of young people with fewer opportunities;Mapping the situation and stakeholders in Serbia, Bulgaria and Italy in using drama based youth work as a psychosocial support of young people;Challenging existing drama youth work practice for questioning youth work standards according to ETS;Widening psychosocial support methodologies for different stakeholders, Integrating different youth work and psychosocial support practices on EU level for development of social inclusion;Building a sustainable network;Dissemination of the results.We wanted to make first recommendations in terms of ETS competence framework for drama based youth work for psychosocial support of young people with fewer opportunities, share different practices in drama based youth work for young people with fewer opportunities, map possible stakeholders important for systemic changes and advocacy and to promote inclusive practices and the results of the project in terms of EU values and non-formal education benefits for youth.<< Implementation >>We implemented:Online coordination meeting, held on 24th of October 2022.5-days Training-seminar, realized from the 2nd until 7th of February 2023,Meeting for creating recommendations and eToolkit, realized from 23rd until 27th of June 2023.Final conference in Genoa, held from 1st until the 4th of November 2023.Online evaluation meeting, held on 15th of February 2024.One additional partner`s meeting was held on 17th of March 2023 for additional preparations for the meeting in Plovdiv. Also, instead of 3 dissemination activities for eToolkit, 4 were organized (1 offline in Italy, 2 offline in Bulgaria and 1 hybrid in Serbia). Promotion was done during the project duration on social media and news articles.<< Results >>Developed consortium of partners, strengthen group of 15 youth workers/leaders for drama-based youth work and psychosocial support with YouthPasses issued, DIOKNO mapping with the list of 100 stakeholders important for the topic, designed and disseminated eToolkit with recommendations from the field through 4 activities and email marketing, realized final conference with newly formed network of at least 30 practitioners and stakeholders and promotions of the project on social media.