15 Mar Transnational meeting in Utrech
Yarim project had its third transnational meeting to check the benchmarks of the project in Utrecht (The Netherlands) during two days, from March 13th to 14th 2019. Partners from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France and the Netherlands came together with joy and a strong concentration to finalise the big agenda in two days.
It was an impressive meeting because we shared the benchmarks and all is very promising and on track. In the first place we shared and evaluated the Training material for youth workers to empower them to understand and moderate interrelgious dialogues. The training was tested in all countries and based on the test we were able to develop strong evaluation points to improve the training. The evaluation results of the test were very positive. The variety ánd the indepth methodologies of this training were highly appreciated, the wicked problems behind interreligious conflicts between youth are very well distangled and presented in clear modules to the users. The evaluation showed that the training helps youth workers to understand the concept of religion better and to moderate dialogues and discussions about diverse religions. It also helps the youth workers to create a clear idea about the spectrum of ‘radicalisation to violent radicalisation’. Trainers and youth workers who evaluated the training were very inspired to have those exchanges about diverse religion. They mentioned in their evaluation that they really liked it too to exchange with each other how they perceive young people nowadays. The training offers also positive methods to discover your own bias when we think about social media and religion. And the trraining offers good and concrete steps to educate youth workers and their youth to debate. We have defined mainly practical ideas how to make the training even more usersfriendly online.
Another benchmark that was realised was the toolkit to support youth workers and young people who work with youth to listen actively. This is a toolkit with theory ánd practical exercises. The exercises are developed by young people from all the YARIM countries. Coming months we will test the toolkit. Another product that was finalised was an indepth publication in which we show the context in the participating countries in terms of the status of the religion in our countries and the legal framework. This document also shows a series of very good best practices of s interreligious dialogues all over the world.
It offers the user tips to start a dialogue yourself too.
Besides the concentration in the work there was a lot of friendship and joy in the consortium because we cooperate now for about 1,5 year together. The group enjoyed the historical town, the office of IDEA and the pleasant atmosphere in Utrecht, its Streets and restaurants. It was again another beautiful exchange in one of Europe’s best kept secret cities!
