YOUdiscovery TOOLKIT

Youth project Rajcza 2021

"YOUdiscovery" is an invitation to ask questions, discover what is important to us, search for and express yourself, strengthen your self-esteem, gain confidence, learn and overcome obstacles, make informed choices and take action.

Here are some of the questions that we will ask during the exchange: What interpersonal skills would we like to take care of? What can you do to better understand yourself and others? How is it worth communicating in a group?

How to avoid behaviors that distance us from others? How does communication affect our emotional and social health?

How to shape our relationships consciously? How to deal with stress situations? How to care for relationships when we have different opinions? Where to start your own journey?

No matter what we do and who we are, usually other people accompany us. We invite you to a common walk to take care of this dimension of our life, which is communication, and which is fundamental to social and emotional health. In this expedition, there will be a positive atmosphere, learning the culture of other countries, non-formal methods that are close to us.

Social skills posters Posters created by the participants upon discussion and workshops on social health and how certain skills can contribute in building a well working, healthy society.

Social health and effective communication infographics Infographics were the results of workshops which main topic was communication, establishing relationships and bonding.

Trees of social cognition Participants, as a summary of their „You discovery” experience, created an art work, which portrayed a tree as a metaphor of human’s life.

We highlighted 3 stages: Rooting - even before a baby’s birth and when the child is small, when everything is about what they inherit, get from their families, ancestors, background and tradition.

Growing - when a person becomes more aware of who they are, makes their first decisions and choices, forming bonds with people outside from their families.

Blossoming - when a person is counciously formed, can influence and inspire others, leave a relevant mark of their work and existence on others and fulfills their life mission.

On each stage participants were asked to create questions or thoughts that a person can face, while entering a new phase of their life. This therapeutic artwork gave participants not only the time to relax and express their vision, but also was a possibility to reflect and give insight in their lives - the past, present and the future.

Tell your story

Four stories created and written down by the participants, based on activities connected with finding out the most burning and important social and health problems in our today’s reality.

Our stories are about people who face problems such as: educational pressure, discrimination, mental health, the effects of Covid - 19.

Mental health There is a boy named Johnny. That lives in a big city Although he meets a lot of people in high school feels alienated.

He feels lost in today's world because of influence of the events that happened in secondary school - his father died After that he became very silent, sad, depressed , lonely, isolated himself he also don't want to hang out with his small group of friends because he can't see anything positive In his life.

When he became silent and less outgoing other teenagers started make fun of him so his social anxiety increased He spends all his free time in his room alone Drawing pictures that shows what he feels inside There were people that wanted to talk to him about the issue and help him but he refused .

The school psychologist tried to have a conversation with him but he didn't wanted to say a word.

Maybe one day he will be ready to work out what happened fight social anxiety and move on with his life.

Education pressure George is 18 years old and comes from laywer Family. He wants to become a Broadway dancer but his parents do not support him in his dream to become a dancer in case they want him to study law.

He is very good at dancing and at school.

His best friend supports him and encourages him to become a dancer.

George's dance teacher thinks that he has a lot of potential and that he should continue in this time; the teacher and his best friend go to speak for George's parents so that he can change his point of view.

Discrimination Bunny is a 15 years old boy from Jamaica. He lives with his dad in Poland in Little City called Szczebrzeszyn, since his parents are divorced. Because of the Color of the skin he is facing a lot of problems in his Society. In school he has to fight with bullies because his classmates don’t accept him.

They are making fun of his name and call him names like Grasseater. They leave him carrots in his locker with a note „bon apetite’. One Day in PE class, the teacher picked 2 leaders to form the teams. Everybody was devided and only he was left alone. In this situation he had to play with himself. While he was playing a Group of older kids came up to him and wanted to „play” with him but they have Hidden intensions. They took his ball and started passing it between them. He tried to take the ball back but he couldn’t reach it because he was too small. He knew that his teacher will be angry with him if he didint Took the ball from them. While he was trying to get the ball one of the bullies put a leg in front of him to make him trip and Fall down. Everyone was laughing at him, and calling him racist slurs. Suddenly a voice is Heard from behind saying „What are you doing, leave him alone”. They turned around and saw a girl approaching them with a furious look on her face. After they saw her, they threw the ball and ran away. She came up to the boy and gives him a helping hand…

Covid-19 issue Alex, 18 years old is a student from Poland and just moved to a college in Canada. Before the Covid, they were a sociable person. Their whole city is in lockdown and there are no ways for them to make any friends. They used to live with their family and had a lot of friends. Ever since COVID-19 started everything became more difficult. They are under a lot of pressure because they must juggle between working and studying from home and being worried about their family’s health because their mother is a person at risk.

It is another day in lockdown for Alex, and it feels like everything is becoming more and more difficult every day. They’re stuck in a routine they can’t stand anymore, it’s always the same thing: studying on the laptop the college gave him with the university’s weak Wi-Fi, then working again but on his side-job, and finally trying to talk to his friends and family from back home but because of the time zone. They tried everything they saw on social media: walking, jogging, cleaning, working out, cooking. EVERYTHING except for art. In Alex’s mind, art is too beautiful to be easy, it has to be difficult for them.

But one day, while doing groceries, they passed through the art supplies aisle. At first, they thought: “I should try, just to see.”, but something in their head kept on telling them that there is no way they could be good at it, that this is gonna be a waste of time, money, and energy. There are not capable. They stood there for way too long, looking at the canvases. It looks weird, they do not want to look crazy, so they took a few small canvases and some paint. They decided to bring them home and to give it a try, nobody is going to see it anyway.

When they came home, they left the supplies in their small living room and started staring at it. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”, they thought.

They watched some Bob Ross’s videos and started following all the instructions. It wasn’t an exact copy, of course, but the result pleased them. The kind words of the man in the screen helped a lot and gave them more confidence. At some point they felt like trying alone, just them, some music, and the canvas. He gave everything he had, every feeling they had at that time were on the white background. Soon, it wasn’t white at all. It was full of colors and shapes that just don’t mean anything when taken apart. They thought it looked like a mess at first, but it was a good mess. Alex loved it. It was powerful, they felt powerful. They just had to show it to their mom.

They looked at the time, it was late for Alex, but for their family it was still okay. They called, feeling confident but still a little bit anxious.

“Maybe they will not like it”, “Maybe they don’t care.”

Their parents answered, the painting was the first thing they saw. They just couldn’t stop cheering Alex, complimenting them. They were so supportive.

Sometimes, you have to realize that the art is made by the artist, now by whether others think it’s beautiful or not. Like Van Gogh, it might not be your time to shine. But it WILL come. So you just have to keep on doing it, and stop waiting on people to realize that what is great in what you are doing.

World cafe

On one of the workshops, our participants were trying out to find systemic solutions on the chosen social and health problems, they were previously working with creating stories based on the real life experiences.

Mental health more available therapy promote the phone line for mental health finding/discovering new hobbies going to activities that focus on emotional intelligence and personal development class activities organized by the school psychologist travel can be a solution to think about something else normalize that everybody has a problem and you don’t need to close keeping a journal for everything - organize everything let out the emotions classes that focus on mental health issues in school developing/tightening relations with parents-kid play down the fact of the fact of going to a psychologist to solve problems, remove taboos

Educational pressure teacher training - focus on knowledge not grades understanding students needs grades need to be a feedback meeting with parents and school psychologists in order to make them understand their children needs extracurricular activities that help students explore themselves the friends group can take care about someone need help. The group can listen, introduce a mediation and protect the people less theory more practice

Discrimination rising awareness about the issue by organizing campaigns, workshops and international partnerships that involve schools and organizations the teacher in the school can give a lot of situations about discrimination and create a debate in class the parents can explain the situation to the children to debate into the family -> prescribers teaching children about differences organize exchange in school sharing support to the minority (social media, festivals) having support groups for both sides (for those that foreigners and those who are citizens) Covid- 19 issues global immunity by most people getting sick cybercafes with good wi-fi for people who don’t have access to the internet (with a distance and masks) suport groups led by trained people (like a therapist) club activities on zoom create safe enviroment for sick people -> place to talk with people like them “i’m in your shoes” organized support groups for those who lost someone due to covid-19 new job training distributing tasks by local council what will make community feel involved

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