From 8th to 15th July 2018, the Italian team left for Riga, Latvia! We were three participants, Elena, Gian Marco and Iurij ready to take part into “Inside Outside”, a training course about social and emotional intelligence. Ten associations from ten countries were involved in the project, sending three participants each: Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, Spain.
The aim of the project was to raise consciousness and awareness towards the quality of youth work and the inner self of the youth workers themselves especially in the field of social and emotional intelligence.
It has been a great opportunity to share and learn new methods to be used in our daily activities and professional lives in which we have to interact with youngsters. Despite our different backgrounds and current activities we all found common tools and resources to be applied into our areas:
- Elena is a psychologist and will use the acquired methods with the aim of making the EVS volunteers capable of becoming aware of their own emotions, ways of thinking, feeling and interacting;
- Gian Marco is a social worker who mostly works with marginalised teenagers and has found the understanding and comprehension of the EI sides as the most rewarding tool;
- Iurij is a teacher and also referees football youth championships. He could experience and learn new tools and attitudes to put in practice in the school and sport environments especially when conflictual situations arise.
We do believe sharing backgrounds and point of views can enhance mutual understanding and comprehension.
The Blue Print has been found very useful in recognising both one’s own emotions and feelings and those of the other people and use them in order to develop a personal growth path.
We also imported the “Tell Your Story” cards which has already been explored by Elena in her professional activities.
We do not go deeper into the description of the Latvian traditional cultural event, the amazing campfire following the emotional and powerful silent day, the fire-walking night and finally the tasty Latvian dinners. It is kind of hard to find the most appropriate words to describe these experiences which have been a mix of feelings and emotions that deserve to be lived. We are super glad and happy to have had this opportunity.
The participation to the project has been possible thanks to the funds provided by the European Union through Erasmus+ mobility project and the Baltic Regional Fund.
The biggest THANK YOU goes to Ginta, Natalie and Lauma who guided us through the whole week while enjoying the marvellous environment of Puduri and to Vicolocorto that gave us this opportunity!
Elena, Gian Marco & Iurij
Vicolocortini 