InFormal Coaching

Historically, young people have faced social exclusion, and the recent economic downturn has prompted high unemployment, which particularly affects the younger generation. However, some disadvantaged groups of young people face exclusion in the longer term for reasons beyond the current crisis. Remaining outside the global labor market has far-reaching consequences – not solely economic. These include a loss of confidence, an undermining of trust and expectations, and an increasing risk of social exclusion and disengagement from society.

There are, also other issues that affect youth and lead to political crisis. Global threats such as terrorist attacks and armed conflicts caused a huge refugee and migration wave in Europe. These and many other factors stipulate increasing of intolerance, xenophobia, violence, conflicts oriented by cultural fears, numerous stereotypes and prejudices, intercultural misunderstanding, inability to think critically and lack of intercultural competence in general. Young people are more than others affected by those issues, especially being in a situation of current economic crisis. They feel afraid, they are frustrated, they don’t know what to feel and how to react, as a result they became either inactive or join the extremist movements, and they definitely need to be supported in this hard situation by adults, by peers, by educational institution, by NGOs and by policy makers.

Tackling youth unemployment, social exclusion, intercultural communication and youth participation continues to be a policy priority for European and national governments and the need to empower young people is increasingly recognized in this process. We see youth empowerment as an attitudinal, structural, and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people, including youth and adults.

The LTTC “InFormal Coaching” is a follow up of the Long-term project called “InFormal – integration of non-formal education approach to the formal education system for youth empowerment at the local level” that attempts to use coaching as a tool for youth empowerment in order to address all the mentioned issues and to build a stable and productive co-working platform for educators coming from formal education and youth field (NGOs and other youth authorities).