Last Friday, on November 26, Youth Power Great Minds Meeting took the place in Berlin where more than 40 people gathered for networking, to make new acquaintances, to discuss current problems that are covering whole Europe and their solving. The main goal of the conference was to change negative perceptions in society.
We opened the conference with 25 minutes long video where we showed to participants the most beautiful parts of Youth Power history, all our work and achievements for the last 9 years. After the video, participants had opportunity to enjoy the beautiful dance performance by our YP employees Daniel and Veronika.
After the video and dance performance, we started with inspiring rounds where 9 speakers talked about 10 different inspiring stories. We discussed topics such as “Creative Dance”, “LGBTIQA*, FLINTA* & Co.”, “Digital Integration – How does it work?”, “organization MasterPeace and their work”, “Sport”, “Non-Formal-Education”, “Authentic Storytelling”, “Empathie, Geduld und einer guten Portion Humor.”Life raft” youth welfare” and “Why MasterPeace likes Doughnuts”.
Annskar Fekete led the inspiring story “LGBTIQA*, FLINTA* & Co.” where she and participants tried to answer questions such as “What marginalized life realities are behind these abbreviations? Why is it important that I deal with diverse gender identities as well as sexual / romantic orientations? How do I create a safer space for queer youth?”
Daniel Medeiros explained us why “Creative Dance” is important to develop creativity and new possibilities of interper-sonal communication. Dance is an art form in which human move-ment becomes the medium for under-standing, communicating ideas, feelings and experiences. The elements of dance are the basic concepts and vocabulary for developing creative movement skills.
Anne Kjaer Bathel introduced us about Digital Integration – How does it work? inspiring story. ReDI School is teaching refugees and migrants digital skills such as coding, data science, user experience design and Internet of things. Why? To help accelerate job market integration. There are currently 84.000 available jobs in the German IT industry, and they are all looking to hire talent. In the workshop Anne talked about how she started the school in Berlin, and now she teaches more than 2000 people a year.
Aart Bos talked about his organization „MasterPeace“. They belive that there are 7 billion talents and not 7 billion issues. He shared their vision, strategy, talked about their global partners and lessons he learned in 44 countries.
Enrico Taddia, director of Fondazione Don Giovanni Zanandrea, told us about the importance of Sport. Sport is important for everyone, also for people with disabilities. It’s important because it’s good for health and offers the chance to know people and to make new friends, as well as it can become a very serious passion, useful for further personal development. Active lifestyles, physical activities and sports are fundamental elements for the cognitive development and the social inclusion of the disabled people. It promotes well-being, physical and mental health, prevents disease, improves social relations and quality of life, produces economic benefits and contributes to environmental sustainability.
Non – formal education topic was also part of the inspiring stories and our Nedim Mičijević, program manager of Youth Power, perfectly described to participants the meaning of it. They all together tried to answer questions such as “What is non-formal, formal and informal learning, and how can we differentiate these? Do we need only formal education, or formal education should be supplemented by other kinds of education and learning? How can non-formal education influence the lives of young people across Europe and broader? These were only a few out of many questions they talked about and responded to during the interactive.
Authentic Storytelling inspiring story was held by Kristine Tauch. She is a qualified pedagogue, author and director. She leads social projects in the fields of film and creative writing, among others with people from prostitution and with war trauma. “How do we as youth workers manage to build trust? How do we deal with the stories of the people entrusted to us? How can storytelling be used meaningfully for social work?“ were the questions that she discussed with her participants.
“Life raft” youth welfare“ inspiring story was held by our employees Franky and Jennifer who are both very experienced in social work field. Youth welfare – a tightrope act between drinking coffee (clichés), coercive context, framework conditions, gray areas and duty of care. Most young people do not decide themselves / voluntarily to be placed in inpatient care. But what if nothing works at home and there is not enough strength to deal with daily conflicts? What if there is no parental home and you have nowhere to go? Jennifer and Franky discussed these questions with their particupants.
Aart Bos had opportunity to led two inspiring stories and this one was called “Why MasterPeace likes Doughnuts“. MasterPeace mission is to create a sustain-able future to all. The principlesof the Doughnut Economy are a unique way to realize the Sustainable Development Goals and nudge youngsters to be an active citizen who takes ownership and acts to built a thriving society.
After the inspiring stories, we continued with “Boling Frog” game where we all together talked about the biggest problems that Europe is currently facing with. We discussed topics such as racism, discrimination, freedom of opinion and equality. We conclude the conference with the “Finding solutions” workshop where we presented all possible and the best solutions to prevent these issues.
