EU-Funded Project: Preventing Violence in Uruguay

A project co-funded by the European Union: A Social & Emotional Program to Prevent Violence through the Empowerment of Educational & Youth Centers.  A project developed by  Dianova Uruguay and Dianova Spain.

 

Dianova will provide educators and teachers in educational and youth centers with a number of emotional and social tools to help them raise awareness of the need to prevent violence for and among young people. The project will be partially funded by the European Union through the European Instrument for Democracy & Human Rights (EIDHR).

The project is grounded on interaction training and emotional learning methodologies through experience-sharing and citizen participation. It is intended for educational and youth centers through working with education professionals – including teachers, educators and multidisciplinary staff – and young people.

The project aims to provide teachers and youth workers with adequate training so that they can, in turn, pass on these information and abilities to a carefully selected group of young ‘facilitators’ in the participating centers. These ‘facilitators’ will later on start a number of supervised projects destined to raise awareness of the need to prevent violence and other vulnerability situations among their peers. The overall project will be held over a thirty-six month period, within some thirty educational and youth centers (formal and non-formal education) in eleven departments of the country.

After an initial phase to assess the levels of violence in a learning environment, based on a survey directed to educational and youth centers’ teachers and staff, a seminar will be held for and with education professionals, as well as a web site and online forum for professionals and young people.

The other stages of the project will consist of:

  • Design of training and support materials for education professionals;
  • Completion of the training for the professionals, followed by feedback meetings to share knowledge and experiences;
  • Providing support and training to a number of young people, based on the materials that have been already designed;
  • Providing support to education professionals and other role models to help form and train groups of young people that will become ‘facilitators’ with the task of disseminating the project’s values to other groups;
  • Supporting education professionals in their work with facilitators, e.g. to help them identify and prepare further prevention instruments within their own facilities or elsewhere;
  • And eventually, the dissemination of the project’s outcomes as a tool to promote the rights to safety and citizenship, while helping reinforce community participation.