Visit to Allianassi (Finnish Youth Co-operation)

THE MOG BLOG continues...

So the REAL today is Tuesday 12th May 2009. Last night was great; hetting to know each other etc. although it's nearly high summer here, so there's hardly any dark. A bit like that film "Insomnia" with Al Pacino and Robin Williams, except it's really nice in Helsinki.

Anyway this morning after having a weird dream where i had got up late and missed today's visits, I woke up and found I hadn't missed them at all.

So let's begin with our visit to Alliansi (Being Different Together), the national youth work organisation in Finland (est.1993) which supports over 3,400 youth workers in the field as well as 1200 member youth organisations across the country.

Quick Overview

So the vast majority of organinsations engaging and working with young peolple in Finland are members of Alliansi, which aims to support and develop youth work practice regionally, nationally and internationally.

The main focus of the organisation is to represent and lobby for the rights of both young people and those who support them through influencing and lobbying government in order to influence policy and the direction of youth work nationally.

Alliansi also offers a range of services to member organisations and the young people they represent through education and training and major seminars in youth work such as the Alliansi Cruise ( a youth work seminar on a boat!!!).

Multi cultural and minority work and the strive towards equality in youth work in the face of an ever changing demographic pushes Alliansi onward to provide resources and training for youth work organisations in order to promote equality of opportunity and representation.

Collaborative project work with organisations representing minority groups as well as networking can promote a sense of belonging and a feeling of being part of a national strategy; Alliansi is leading the way in this ongoing process in Finland which encourages mutual learning and understanding.

Other activities include:

• youth elections which are connected to parliamentary elections which encourages participation and develops an interest and understanding of politics and democracy. Alliansi have also been campaigning and lobbying to lower the voting age from 18 to 16 years.

• A magazine for professionals in the field (published 8 times a year)

• A library and Information Service for young people (NOTE: young people in Finland are those under 30 years as defined by The Youth Act).

• Youth Exchanges

• Member European Youth Forum (YFJ), ERYICA and the member organisation for EYCA (European Youth Card Association)

More info: ENGLISH
FINNISH

YOUTH PARTICIPATION AND ALLIANSI

Alliansi has a range of youth participation projects that it supports including:

• Youth Councils
• Youth Parliament
  
• Youth Forums
• A national Board of Youth Councils

But perhaps the most intriguing is a participation project run by Alliansi at www.valtikka.fi

This project actively promotes citizenship, E-democracy and politics by offering a discussion platform for young people involved, plus those who work with young people by offering lesson plans and other resources.

Also included on the website is a search engine realsted directly to upcoming EU elections. Young people can use this site to engage with parliament and each other in an on and offline environment.

EDUCATION METHODS

"The Living Library"
This model comes from Denmark as a reaction to issues around racist violence and aims to break down prejudice and promote equality by encouraging participants to engage in dialogue with those whom they rarely have the opportunity to to talk to.

The model centers on the "living book" who is a volunteer with a paticular story/experience/background (plus support and training prior to the event) that can be "borrowed" by participants through the facilitation of a "librarian", who has a "catalogue" of "books" (topics/issues).

This encourages the "reader" to "borrow" "books" relating to issues that directly affect them and thus provide an opportunity discuss those issues directly; face to face.

There are a few rules:

• Based on mutual respect
• The "reader" must return the "book" in the same physical and mental condition as it was "borrowed".
• The "book" can end the discussion at any time.

The "borrowing" lasts 20mins-1 hour and is facilitated by the "librarian". The "reader" then completes an evaluation form.

More complete information on this model at living-library.org

GAIA - Assembly of the Nations

This is a role playing game based around the themes of human rights, diversity, democracy, decision making, the environment, peace, equality and development.

The game features a parallel planet Earth (Gaia) which must be prevented from total destruction by the Assembly of Nations (the players) who must find common and agreeable solutions to the problems that the planet faces.

Full manual and game cards available at www.keks.fi/gaiaenglish (ENGLSIH VERSION)

YOUNG CULTURE

This festival project is housed within Alliansi and was developed from the young people's Art Festival established in 1970.

It comprises of two national festivals as well as 20-30 regional festivals across Finland which provide opportunities for young people to showcase their talent and receive feedback from professional artists.

In 2008 there were more than 18000 participants nationally and as a result of the festivals some young people were able to take up the opportunity to travel as far as China and Trinidad and Tobago.

The aim for 2010 is to establish this cultural youth work as a part of every city's basic youth work.

A great line: "Young people should be seen and heard"

CONCLUSIONS

I must say I was extremely impressed with the strength and depth of Alliansi with regard to national, regional and international youth work.

For me, the model of the living library is something that will definitely be happening in Wales.

There seems to be a real serious intent in terms of both youth work professionals and the government here to promote, celebrate and encourage youth participation and engagement.

Many thanx to all there who have given such inspiration.

Going to Finland...

THE MOG BLOG continues...

So, yesterday, myself and 2 colleagues from Wales left Cardiff at 2am heading for Helsinki.

Wait...I think that was Sunday night? No Monday morning...

Heading for a study visit in Helsinki with other Youth INFO workers from Belgium, Slovenia and Finland.

So, i'll be using the next couple of posts to record what we've been up to, where we've been, what we've seen and so on.

I've just figured out how this broadband connection works so i think i'm a day late. Maybe that's better 'cos I don't necessarily need to go into the details of last night. Suffice to say we had few beers.

Of course only a few as remember we are in Finland (he he).

...and then there were other people...obviously i had left at this point and was very much at the hotel sleeping....in the light....and that's not my glass in front of the camera...

Meet the Streets Dec 08

THE MOG BLOG continues...

This post is for my upcoming trip to Luxembourg as part of the "Meet the Streets" Project where young people from 20 countries in Europe ar coming together for an initial training programme that aims to collect the views of young people across Europe on their views on youth policy.



My name is Mog (not Mr. Monk who is, in fact, a character from an American comedy detective series; completely obsessed with cleanliness and germs)


I work for Canllaw Online in Wales, UK, an organisation dedicated to providing quality information to young people at a local and national level.

I have a tendency to speak at a rate and often get a little over excited to the extent that my own mother would probably misunderstand me!

I run a Digital Storytelling project in Wales where I travel all over the country collecting the stories and individual experiences of young people on a range of topics including being young and..gay, young and..homeless, an offender, a volunteer, in transition, making a choice etc etc.

I’ve been invited here to talk to you about effective means of recording interviews in order to get the best possible content for the fantastic “Meet the Streets” project.

In my work I am constantly trying to find effective ways to capture stories in a way that is honest and uncolored by the presence of both myself, and any kit I might be using. It’s often much better and easier for the YP I speak with to respond instantly to questions aimed at teasing out the story. Some of the YP I work with have literacy issues or perhaps don’t feel comfortable reading from a script.

For these reasons as well as an awareness of how much a microphone and the environment of “being recorded” can effect the honesty, integrity and “realness” of a story, we have developed a series of techniques and workshops designed to illicit stories without undue discomfort and stress for participants.

Although the aim of MTS is “gathering and analysing the opinions on young people on the future of youth policies in Europe”, the means of recording responses to questions can often result in content with little or no substance. For example:

Q: What is your opinion on the future of youth policies in Europe?
A. Uh? What?/Good/Bad/Dunno!

Obviously some groups and individuals may respond better (in terms of actual editable, concrete content) but it may well be worth breaking the question, or list of questions, into 2 problems that need to be solved by the interviewer:

1. What is the question to be addressed (i.e. Q above)?
2. What does the question actually mean?

Think about how you would respond to being approached by a complete stranger with a clipboard and a list of questions. By it’s very nature, asking questions of strangers “on the street” is an invasive activity, which can lead to offence and non-cooperative attitudes very quickly.

It’s happened to me, what I mean is I’ve been the person being asked questions on the street by a film crew with a big camera. It was a question about politics in the UK for a local news item. Suffice to say my response was not aired and I was left feeling a bit stupid and humiliated by my inability to comment when feeling a little pressured. What about you? Have you ever been questioned by people in suits? Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. If so, like me, I’m sure you would want to stop that experience happening to anyone else.

So, let’s think of adopting another more friendly approach (I mean universally friendly and not just “youth”-friendly).

The Storytelling Approach

Everyone has a story to tell. Sometimes we may feel that our stories (often the “containers” of opinion) are unimportant and not worth being told as no one really wants to listen to them. But we tell stories every day, a great deal of our daily conversation is based on storytelling, it’s just that somehow we have managed to remove the term from ourselves and applied it to story “professionals”; writers, performers etc.

Think about how many stories you have told since arriving here. Who have you spoken to and given information regarding where you come from, why you’re here, what your expectations are, what last night’s dinner and activities were like? etc.

All these communications are stories of our lives; as we tell our stories we offer the listener a chance to understand us, to understand our motivations and opinions; as a listener we gather information in order to evaluate and make decisions and from opinions about others.

Stories and storytelling help us form alliances, share opinion and form communities. Listening to others’ stories helps us figure out where we fit into the world, what others have to offer and how we stand in relation to our communities.

Are you hearing me?

An ability to listen in an active manner can be crucial to retrieving information from a story we are being told. It is often the case that what is really being said can be missed by a “non-active” listener and in the context of this project can result in an opportunity to record top quality content being lost.

Often as active listeners we are like gold prospectors in that we often have to “pan” or sieve the sediment in order to reveal the ”nugget” of gold; the crux and opinion; the real meaning of a story.
Hearing and listening is not necessarily the same thing. We can often listen without hearing. In other words there are several factors involved in picking up the nuances of what is being said to you:


Know what I mean?

SOLER is a technique that will assist you with attending skills and active listening. Your verbal responses will be based securely on a firm non-verbal foundation, using your body language to say that you are open and listening to another person.



Do you see what I mean? (The projector inside my head)

I don’t know about you but there is a projector inside my head. It’s at the corner of mog street and 5th, inside an old style cinema with a uniformed usher at the box office. There is a plush red interior with gold furnishings and thick rope that the usher lifts when you’ve paid your entrance fee. There are burlesque statues and paintings hanging from the lobby walls in ornate frames sporting cherubim and golden scrolls. The seats in the cinema are equally ornate, you can’t see them as it’s dark, but when you are guided to your seat you are able to just glimpse the dark red velvet in the torch beam wielded by the usher. It’s smoky and warm with the smell of fresh buttered popcorn and filled with the low murmurings of just a few other people somewhere close…but not too close.

The heavy curtains part and the whirring of the projector accompanies a conical flickering light that excites the warm smoke and falling balls of dust into a frenzy of dancing activity, rising and falling in tune and time with the whirr and the flicker of the old projector.

This is where I “watch” the stories I hear, the stories that live their lives outside the cinema and belong to me. This is where I watch the repeats of my favourite stories and the new features, soon to be advertised as part of the cinemas’ “on demand” facility.

You see, despite the antiquity of this building, it still manages to stay current and up to date. The management is still very intrigued and inspired by the outside world.

During the interval, a young woman comes selling cigarettes, ice creams and drinks.




One of my favourite stories I watch often is about my brother Mog and the action men…




Now, I’m obviously a very visual person. This is something I have only discovered relatively recently through allowing myself the opportunity to objectively examine my own listening processes. However, the point I am trying to make here is that regardless of the format in which a story is delivered (through text as in my cinema, or told narratively as in Mog and the action men) we are able to create images in the minds of others. This is the reason that purely audio stories can be extremely effective. It is also the reason why reading can be such an immersive experience; we will try and project our own experiences, pictures and feelings onto others’ stories in order to connect to and make sense of it. In essence, we should never ignore our inherent need for interaction with others as well as our seemingly never-ending curiosity and want for others’ company and a sense of needing to belong somewhere, be a part of something, to belong.

The Stories of Pictures and Objects in your Pockets

The starting point for a story does not always have to be words that cerate images, it can be the reverse. Remember that all we’re trying to do, through storytelling, is encourage participants to start sharing their stories and experiences. A picture, or an object can often be the jumping off point for a story perhaps you never knew you possessed.

Take a look in your pockets, see what you’ve got. I bet there’s a story there somewhere.




Take a look at this random pic of me and see if you can guess the story behind it. I can make up a story. Maybe there’s something around that corner that has grabbed my interest. What would the next picture be?













What about this one?












The Learning Event Generator

After a recent conference on new tech, I got in touch with John Davitt, a champion of open source learning and creative thinking who has developed the LEG for educational purposes. Here’s how it looks and the web address is underneath:

http://www.newtools.org/

The LEG generates random tasks using 20 possible “do” and 20 possible “as”. By “clicking here” you can generate new tasks at random.

I’ve adapted this using Nodebox on the Mac:






Finally

As a summary to all this I think it’s all about tools. These approaches to generating content are just tools that you can use to engage participants and get the best content you can by making sure your sessions are fun, interactive and most importantly more fun.

The main tools perhaps are:

• Do you have a picture or object that represents your story/opinion?
• How do YOU want to tell YOUR story?
• Be interested and engaged
• Use the LEG?
• Play some warm up games: e.g.tell us about something you love/something you hate (this often brings out the passion!)

Sometimes you may be working with a group, and other times you may be working with individuals. Whichever situation you find yourself in, I think the most important thing is for YOU to be engaged, involved and interested.

new stuff..

THE MOG BLOG continues...
Where to start? First of all theres some funky new SMS tools on this page I'm experimenting with for use at the upcoming GwirForce Residential.

I've got another site/document up about using Web 2 tools in youth work HERE. This looks at how free and open source tools can be used to inform and develop working with YP in a sustainable, creative and global way. (yes I went to ESDGC launch!!!!)

I'm off to Luxembourg in December to run a workshop on effective interview techniques for a project that'll be running all over Europe called "Meet the Streets"...how cool is that!!!!

More coming soon...

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Cheap SMS to UK with CardBoardFish Business SMS

Just what I was thinking..

THE MOG BLOG continues...
This is from http://www.breakfastsociety.com/2008/09/are-you-a-teacher-of-knowledge-or-a-facilitator-of-learning/; a great blog relating to all this youth workery and technologery (!!!!!)


Are you a Teacher of Knowledge or a Facilitator of Learning?
September 11th, 2008 by mas | Filed under Education & Skills, Innovation & Technology.

Maybe “both” is your answer! But are you really?

I was reading this discussion about ‘Using Technology in Education‘ that includes a list of gut reaction responses by educators as to what their fears are about using technology. Some of the things I picked out from that list include:

* I feel like a dinosaur in a world of eagles.
* Not knowing the next step without assistance.
* The kids will know WAY more than I do.
* Not being able to troubleshoot when the kids run into glitches.
* Can’t figure how to do things.
* Biggest fear when things don’t work especially when the kids are flying along, it is so deflating.
* Not knowing how to do a task.
* Looking stupid
* My ineptitude will be revealed to the kids

So can you teach something without being an expert in it first?

That reminds me of conversations we had in the early days of supporting young people to deliver our training. By far the biggest concern young Trainers had with us was that they wouldn’t/weren’t taken seriously - particularly by adult youth workers. This was for a mixture of reasons - the obvious factor of age (very young people being asked to ‘instruct’ much older and sometimes elderly people), being inexperienced, and also because very often young Trainers would end up running a session that wasn’t within their normal expertise.

(Its probably also worth making a point that another factor was the attitudes from some Youth Workers who would make it very well known how ‘qualified’ and ‘experienced’ they were - an attitude I found bewildering given the purpose of their employment!)

How we supported young people to overcome this was to explain they should never assume they are more knowledgeable than the people in their sessions (young or old), and that actually this was not important. What was important was that they were experts in how we did things - they understood the course programme, the structure of the sessions, and our approach to delivering training. Their role was not to ‘educate’, but to facilitate a process through which participants would share knowledge and ideas (and therefore learn).

Everyone who’s ever done any teaching/training/coaching will be very aware that the teacher learns a considerable amount themselves through putting together and delivering teaching.

So I wonder how many of you that are involved with educating feel that in order to educate young people you have to first be an ‘expert’ yourself? Do you need to understand all aspects? or do you instead need to be willing to give things a go, experiment, explore and go on a learning journey with young people? Afterall if you’re not prepared to give something a go because you don’t understand it what sort of example is that?!