Our aim is to create the Academy of dialogue as a platform to teach youth workers and teachers to use their authority wisely and to support young people in entering the dialogues and expressing their opinion in connection to changes that have to come to youth work and to formal education and to support active participation of young people that is nowadays very low.

Trstená and other towns and villages, Slovakia, rural region Orava.

One of the main problems we are facing within youthwork and also in formal education in our region is, that the level of participation of young people in planning and implementing any changes or activities is very low. Although youth organisations or schools very often speaks about need of young people, the reality is that usually directors of schools or youth workers in their organisations use their authority to prepare changes without asking the target group and young people only get the information what is going to change or what is going to be done. It leads young people in our region to passivity that they don’t want to enter the dialogue and they are often afraid to express their opinion, because they don’t believe they are able to influence anything.

The main target group is young people from region Orava at the age of 10 – 18 years old. All of them will come from rural region where they are not used to discuss and also where is very low level of acceptance different opinion.
The second main target group is teachers and youth workers as those who work directly with young people and who are responsible in preparing environment for young people to be able to grow and develop themselves.
Last target group is local authorities as they are founders of schools in our region and they are also responsible for change management as reaction to current situation.

We would like to design and implement long-term educational programme for teachers and youth workers in the topic of constructive dialogue, conflict solving and using the authority to be able to prepare healthy environment in their organisation for implementing changes with young people. First part will consist of training course for youth workers and teachers where they learn concrete methods how to build the culture of dialogue, solve conflicts and use their authority wisely. We will also design experiential programme for young people, lasting 6 month, based on larps that will open the topics of conflicts, dialogues and relation to authorities to change the environment in schools and youth organisation. Youth workers and teachers will implement this programme to their organisation with the mentoring support from us.

The topic of authority and dialogues will be opened within the youthwork and schools in our region. Teachers and youthworks will get the methodology of long-term programme, that will help them open up the topic with their students to improve the environment at schools and youth organisations to enable active participation of young people in planning and implementing changes as a reaction to their current needs. Teachers and youth workers will gain unique designed programme for young people and also mentoring support so they will be able to implement the programme directly to their work. We will use innovative methods of non-formal education and experiential pedagogy to reach desired impact. The environment at schools and youth organisation with change from authoritative to participative.

Our aim is to create the Academy of dialogue to teach youth workers and teachers to use their authority wisely and to support young people in entering the dialogues and expressing their opinion in connection to changes that have to come to youth work and to formal education. As our region is rural and young people don’t have many possibilities for self-development, we would like to encourage them to break passivity and start being active at least at schools or at youth organisations. Youth workers and teachers will learn how to actively start supporting young people in finding healthy relation to authorities without being afraid of expressing their opinion and at the end of the project they will be able to do the programme with their young people to increase the level of democracy.

Our organisation is located directly in Orava region, in Trstená, and we work with young people and people from local community since 2011. We regularly meet people in different events we organize and discover their needs and attitudes. We are experienced in designing non-formal education programme for schools at any level and for young people. We are also experienced in mentoring and coaching skills. In the region we are strong partners for schools and local authorities in the field of youthwork, we implement innovative approaches and support the change of education and environment of entire region.
Our team consists of people who are part of our educational section, who are experienced in preparing long-term programmes based on positive values and character education.

Trainers for teachers and youth workers 6500 €
Personnel costs (project coordinator – accountant, PR manager) – 7500 €
Designing the methodology of training for young people (external experts who are experienced in the topic ) – 7000 €
Mentoring support for teachers and youth workers – 6000 €
Accommodation and food for participants – 3500 €
Material for training and long-term programme - 2000 €
Material for young people as a part of the methodology videos, books, etc.) – 2500 €

Any recommendations how to spread the methodology to schools and youth organisation on national level. And also how to promote the topic of authority and dialogues among the target group of youth workers and teachers.