Youth Projects

My Value:

I wanted to work with the questions that are important in my life, and in my experience, in other people’s life as well, and I find it important to talk about these questions. I think that the value systems we receive from our family define our life us primarily; this is what teaches us what’s “wrong” and “right”.

The goal of my Project:

The goal of my project was to give a chance for people to discuss questions. For example, how can we keep our values in a fast changing world? What happens when our values clash with those of an environment we want to fit in (workplace, family, etc)? How does globalisation affect traditions and values?

Method used:

I thought that for this, a long-going club meeting programme of ours would be ideal. It’s a 1-2 hour long event at a small local theatre to which we invite people to talk about social issues, with 1-2 facilitator and other invited experts. So the facilitators would ask questions along these topics, based on which an interactive discussion can start. We have been doing this monthly for almost three years now. The participants are usually quite diverse, since the topics we discuss there are diverse (but always related to women, gender, and family related issues). Generally there 10-15 people come, usually middle-aged, and most of them are coming now regularly. The process of conducting the project: Right from the beginning I thought it would be interesting to hear what people with different (cultural) backgrounds think about these values, so I thought about asking our Erasmus partners, namely Anna and Mateja, since they both have families now. Unfortunately Anna couldn’t make time for this, but Mateja sent us a short video.

As I usually do, I looked for people who could facilitate the discussion. Besides our regular host, who is a psychology mentor, I invited two other talkers: a writer, who also works with young people, and a drama pedagogue (all there are women). The club meeting started with me introducing the Erasmus project and my social project, then I showed Mateja’s video (which Gábor translated in parallel). Then the the invited talked along some guiding questions, but since the event is interactive, the participants also asked a lot and shared their own thoughts.