About

The READY Project provides a support to youth workers, teachers and trainers who are supporting young people to reach their full potential. Quite often, young people are carrying trauma or challenges from their daily lives and they are bringing these issues into the youth work or education and training space. The READY project partners have been looking to deal with these issues in a range of different settings, from inner city youth centres to more institutional and traditional education spaces as well as through community settings.

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The project emerged from discussions between the partners when they were describing new ideas that they were using and finding some successes. On one side, there was the restorative practice work happening in Dublin within BYC and Nexus. On the other side, there was the TeenYoga work happening in Sweden and Slovenia. Both approaches were offering exciting opportunities for youth workers, teachers and trainers to introduce new ways of engaging their young people. Based on these initial discussions and sharing of results, the genesis for the READY project was formed. 

The main focus was to be able to offer some new ideas and tools for professionals so that they can address issues affecting optimal engagement by young people in a creative manner so that these issues can be explored and the young people can decide how best to address them.

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Through a trauma-informed approach, the project gives us a chance to present teen yoga and restorative practices at both theoretical and implementation levels, before looking carefully and rigorously at how both approaches can be melded and moulded together. This will lead to a brand new READY programme of activities and toolkit that can be used as a set of resources within youth work or teacher training.

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A core part of the logic and rationale for the project steps and methodology is that the programme will be developed in an iterative manner, based on workshops and input from all partners. As the project gets up and moving, a community of practice will be grown and this site will offer a dedicated online space to support the programme activities.

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Over the course of the project, partners will take core aspects of the TeenYoga approach, such as the focus on  the Yamas and Niyamas, ethical and self-discipline principles from yoga philosophy and look at how these principles can be powerfully applied in youth work to foster emotional intelligence, resilience, and positive behaviour. These principles of non-violence and truthfulness are closely aligned to restorative practice approaches and through linking these two approaches in a series of practical READY tools, youth workers can guide their young people in conflict resolution and honest communication. Other principles linked to discipline and contentment can help young people in their efforts to consider ideas of effort, self-acceptance and self-reflection. These principles are summarised below as are some initial ideas regarding use of restorative practices.

 

Please follow the work of the project by registering with us here. Within the community, you can learn more from our work with young people that is based on encouraging personal growth, integrating values into mentoring, learning activities and tools that can help young people to develop strong and healthy relationships and a sense of purpose, key foundations for thriving in life.

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