The Project
Folk tales had been guiding people’s lives for generations in the past. They have a lot to say about how to start an adult life, how to navigate in-between separation from parents, study and work for young people. Working with folk tales is a good coaching method to work with all the different issues around the life start of young people.
Objectives
to improve the preparedness of young people for carrier and life choices by developing their self-reflection, their resilience as well as having them actively make decisions and steps forward their future;
to increase the acceptance of cultural diversities and also positive attitude towards sustainability;
to develop sets of self-help and coaching / training tools for young people and their helpers, advisers and coaches to think through their choices, their motivation, and design their life steps.
Activities
Setting up a group of developer experts as well as a Youth Board;
Training events for young people and youth workers’ trainers;
Multiplier events to engage the larger stakeholder community;
Workshops on the project’s results for young people and youth workers.
Learn more about the Folk Tales work
“Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route to becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in the world, and to come into your own.
Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own lives and selves. […].
Fairy tales are children’s stories […] focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you, and you have power over no one. In them, power is rarely the right tool for survival anyway. Rather the powerless thrive on alliances, often in the form of reciprocated acts of kindness […]”
Christine Woodward
Folk Tales as…
coaching method
Folk tales had been guiding people’s lives for generations in the past. They have a lot to say about how to start an adult life, how to navigate in-between separation from parents, study and work for young people. Working with folk tales is a good coaching method to work with all the different issues around the life start of young people.
problem solving tool
Folk tales reflect upon different kinds of situations people face, and all life situations have their relevant folk tales. Our ancestors still had a close connection with the symbol system of folklore and therefor when a storyteller chose a story, people did understand what it meant: what situation the story hero (protagonist) faced and how s/he solved it. This way folk stories worked (and still can work) as threads to solve personal problems, as patterns to learn from about connections and problem solving.
as empowering instrument
There are stories about leaving the paternal house, stories of marriage problems, stories of conflicts between brothers and sisters, or parents and children, stories of friendships and so on. People in these stories do solve their problems somehow: they develop their personalities to become kings or queens of their lives, their kill dragons of their own bad customs and attitude and collect magical objects of own competencies and skills. As the stories are not about dragons and magical wands – these are all stories of coping and connection, in which everything, every place, every person and being, every object is within our internal world. In each story, the hero(ess) is empowered, reaches to her/his inner resources, and takes steps to change their fates into better.