During two months, a team of organization’s experts carried out the project “Strengthening Youth Social Work Caritas-Spes in Ukraine” with the financial support of the German government, the German Catholic Foundation “Renovabis” and the organization of child protection of the Catholic Church in Germany Kindermissionswerk “Die Sternsinger”. The project was implemented in two slots, called “Management Workshop” and “Light Up Life” (leisure organization for young people).
The aim of the project was to promote the development of competencies in administrative personnel and finance management for effective interaction and mental health support of staff and employees of health facilities for children and adolescents and for training group leaders and leisure organizers by improving creative thinking skills, time management and mastering the tools of administering online and offline events.
The target audience of the project was 30 representatives from Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhya, Kyiv-Zhytomyr, Lutsk, Mukachevo, Kamyanets-Podilsky Dioceses and Lviv Archdiocese.
The partners were the Training and Research Center for Personnel Development and Leadership of Borys Hrinchenko University of Kyiv and the NGO “Space of Equal Opportunities” (Sumy).
The main activities within the project were:
- Ten online trainings by the organization’s experts and partners about administrative, financial and personnel management and project approach in management.
- Eight online trainings by the organization’s experts and partners on the topic of methods, technologies, tools, basic approaches to the organization of offline and online group work, basics of first aid, psychology, sustainable development etc.
- One-day online workshop from experts about youth work, design, public speaking, creative thinking etc.
- One-day final event – presentations of activities developed by project participants.
- Mentor support of participants by the organization’s experts while doing homework and preparing for project presentations.
Among the most important results are:
- 16 members of the Management Slot improved their knowledge of self-management techniques, including time-, resource-, human-management, as well as acquired skills in planning and division of responsibilities in the team; acquired the competencies of a project manager within the implementation of the project approach in management, in particular, got acquainted with the concepts of sustainability and fundraising, as well as acquired new knowledge in the field of financial management during the implementation of their own projects; mastered techniques of effective communication and overcoming conflict situations, learned to recognize the syndrome of emotional burnout and got acquainted with methods of prevention of emotional burnout.
- Participants prepared a mapping of their own organizations (capabilities) with the identification of weaknesses and strengths; analysis of the financial viability of the organization and a map of financial goals; conflict maps to minimize consequences and recommendations for managing one’s emotions; analysis of time stealers and factors from the outside world that hinder the implementation of tasks in the organization.
- 14 participants of the “Light up life” slot gained skills of using digital tools, facilitating online and offline group work methods; learned first aid basics, sustainable development and its global goals, youth policy and tools for influencing youth decision-making in the community, time management and psychological features of communication with children and adolescents.
- Participants developed and presented four of their own online activities to work with vulnerable children and youth within their work in Caritas Spes camps, rooms, kindergartens.
- All participants established strong partnerships and started working on joint projects.
We are very grateful to our partners Caritas-Spes Ukraine for trusting us, to all participants for engagement and willingness to develop themselves and their organizations, and to all coaches and experts for their professionalism and active position.