YOCOMO - Communicating Meaningfully skills - European Training Strategy

Communicating meaningfully

…means building positive relationships with individuals and groups. Youth workers are masters in interacting with young people as well as with international partners and contribute to smooth communication regarding programmes and projects. Communication is a key aspect of youth work. This competence area goes beyond simple communication models and pays attention to the notion of asynchronous communication and the diversity of communication tools. This area is also about how the youth worker constructively handles emotions, inspiration, intuition, empathy and personalities.

The single skills are summarised in different headlines that illustrate what “communicating meaningfully” means for youth workers skill-wise. The “cluster headlines” do not name skills as such; these can be found through clicking on the lists.

Some skills that youth workers need relate to feelings, emotions and deeper awareness. + -

That includes:

the ability to demonstrate empathy in a way that others can learn from it
the ability to deal with emotions and to ask for support when needed
knowing how to develop, adapt and apply methods that support awareness of one’s own identity and its intrinsic elements

Support and encouragement are needed in order to create a space for meaningful communication. + -

To sustain that, youth workers need the ability to:

actively listen
encourage sharing and mutual support within the group
communicate at an eye level with everyone involved

Also, language matters! + -

Thus another helpful skill is to:

speak another language than one’s mother tongue

The digital world of information and communication is an indispensable part of non-formal education. + -

Another skill for youth workers is:

the ability to deal with fake news and other information disorders in a way that others can learn from it

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