Summary
Objectives
The aim of this project is to enhance the awareness of youth workers of the stories and narratives that are used to make sense of the social experience. Using this awareness the project will provide the knowledge, skills and competencies to interact with these narratives to bring about more inclusive, just and peaceful interpretations of these stories. This will provide an additional skillset to youth workers working with youth who are in conflict opening up new possibilities for conflict transformation.
The objectives are:
1) To gain new skills in understanding how stories and narratives are constructed
2) To understand when and how to use stories to become proficient storytellers
3) To use story telling to interact with young people in conflict
4) To open up stories told by young people in conflict to multiple interpretations
5) To create new opportunities for conflict transformation through new stories and new meanings to old stories
Activities
Stage 1 Story Telling:
Story telling is an intrinsic part of the human experience and is an important way in which we organize our experience of the world. Understanding how human beings create and use different stories is important because it provides participants with the tools to understand and interact with the social world around them. This will empower participants to think critically on the narratives that surround them in their personal and professional lives and to understand that these stories are not necessarily set in stone and have the potential to be re-written.
These skillsets will enhance participants employability and professional practice as great story telling is important for diverse sectors such marketing but also for social professions such as youth work. Particularly youth work that is strife with local, community, national or international conflict.
Stage 2 Narrative conflict mediation:
Building on the skills acquired in stage 1 this section of the training will focus and hone the story telling skills to specifically engage people who are part of a conflict and to use the techniques of narrative conflict mediation to examine possibilities for more creative and nuanced understandings of old stories which allow for new possibilities for conflict resolution to occur.
Impact
The impact envisioned is that youth workers working in conflict situations will have:
1) acquired new skills to understand stories that lead or entrench conflicts in young people
2) Learn new story telling structures
3) Enhance communication with persons involved in conflict
4) Empower youth workers to work with youths to understand how their stories on conflict are affecting their lives negatively
5) Train youth workers to use old stories with new meanings as a means to open dialogue for new possibilities for conflict transformation