Case Study No 3

Thrive, Ireland plan to run a special project. There will be 36 participants from Ireland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales.

The total Grant is Euro18090

Background: Thrive is a community of professionals that offer quality tailor-made training programmes, organisation interventions and selection and assessment processes, this training is a result of expressed current needs in the Youth and Community Sector .

Development of the Idea: In Oct/Nov 2001 Causeway and Encounter organised a conference in Loughbourouh (UK) for organisations involved in Cross-border work. It was an issue at the event that youth groups/organisations needed training in conflict resolution before they would feel comfortable dealing with these issues within an exchange environment.

This Special Project will answer this need and is due to take place around the end of 2002 - beginning of 2003. Projects will be invited to send a leader and one young person. Places will be offered on a first come first served basis and on two further criteria. Projects must be able to send both a leader and young person and agree to include the material used on the workshop subsequently.

The key aims of the event are:

To explore how exchange visits sponsored by Causeway could be improved by introducing sessions that enable young people explore how conflict between the peoples of these islands has affected the relationship between people.

To equip participants with the skills and exercises needed to introduce "dealing with conflict" within exchange visits

The Event Itself: This project seeks to address the need identified by Causeway for exchange visits sponsored by the programme to address the key reason why it established i.e. reducing the misunderstanding that arises from the conflict that has taken between the peoples on these islands The project seeks to provide participants (both young people and leaders) with the skills and exercises needed to include this issue within the exchange visit. While recognising that much youth work (as with most adult education processes) needs to build trust between participants at the outset, and later introduce conflict issues within the exchange programme either towards the end of the first exchange or within the return visit.

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