3rd workshop in Riga - Latvia
Third Contact Teaching Workshop in interdiac Learning Programme ‘Make Change Yourselves: turning challenges to your advantage!’ took place in Riga (Latvia) on the 6-10th of March. Diaconia of Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia hosted the workshop and shared their experience of engaging work with marginalised young people. First day of the workshop was the time for debriefing from the practice period of participants and the experts from partner organisations were invited to join this first day on the workshop via the Zoom platform. Partners from Armenian Round Table and Belorus Bractva u gonar Vilenskih muchanikau steered the participatory learning process through the week. The participants marked this week as full of diverse activities which supported their peer learning, sharing first-hand experiences and reflection on the practice with young people, who are marginalised. Some of the participants are further in the preparation of the mini project and some of them are still in the first stage with the idea. The participants are supported during the practice period with the learning supervisor via individual and group meetings - as the strategy to motivate the participant in their work. What was very useful was the discussion groups - about the motivation in the groups - how to motivate the youngsters to do something. It was nice to see the sharing of strapless and challenges across Europe - almost the same troubles and challenges. Good point was also the spirituality discussion in the groups. Very inspiration was also the study visit day - we visited two centres of Diaconia Latvia in Riga. Discussions about the youth diaconal work as agent for change which develops up ‘bottom-up’ initiatives with the young people as part of the empowering and inspiring work with them were supported by the reflective discussions about the need of being together in compassionate presence with the youngsters in their struggles and challenges. Last part was discussion about co-learning exchange (co-learnich exchange is opportunity to stay then days in partner organisation and exchange the inspiration from the partner organisation and use in mother organisation - the base dates are set now is in the process the travel issues and programme. The materials of the project will be shared in open access for those youth workers, who would be willing to organise and run learning process in their working settings. Participants share very positive feedback from the meeting - for example: “This week was a rollercoaster, which ended better than I expected.”. They see most useful the sharing in the group about the troubles and challenges.
