EM(path)4YOU(th): Building Emotional Intelligence

The idea for EM(path) 4 YOU(th) was born during a youth exchange in 2019. We realized how powerful EI is in terms of building a group that includes youth with fewer opportunities – we could include participants with different obstacles, boost their self-esteem and overall team spirit at the Youth Exchange throughout NFE activities on understanding and accepting emotions, practicing empathy and compassion.

We believe that an investment into personal development of the youth workers in terms of their EI & SEL skills is necessary. It might become the major key towards providing quality youth work on a global level that shall positively impact overall inclusion of the youth with fewer opportunities into Erasmus+.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability of a person to identify and recognize own and others’ emotions, it allows using emotional information to guide one’s behaviour and adapt to different environments. EI boosts the ability of listening and mediating – that is crucial when working with young people. Mastering EI is strongly connected to Social Emotional learning (SEL) – the process through which we understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, make responsible decisions.

The objectives of the project were:

• to support well-being & foster assessment of transversal skills and the professional development of participating youth workers;
• to promote EI & SEL education for mental health & well-being of youth workers and youth in general;
• to create a methodology framework for support & inclusion of youth with fewer opportunities through EI & SEL in NFE;
• to support digitization of youth work sector by creating e-learning opportunities via Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and ensure access for peer organizations worldwide;
• to contribute overall in the quality of support provided by youth work sector to people with fewer opportunities;
• to promote such European values as empathy, compassion, intercultural dialogue;
• to promote Erasmus+ and European Youth Goals worldwide.

To reach these objectives, the project created 2 intellectual outputs: 

1. Handbook on Emotional Intelligence & SEL (socio-emotional learning) in youth work. You can dowload it for free here! Both in english and in italian. 
   HANDBOOK ITA E4Y.pdf 38,70 MB
   Handbook Empath English (1).pdf 35,32 MB
2. MOOC (massive open online course) for youth workers: an e-learning course on emotional intelligence: https://empath4youth.com/ 

USEFUL LINKS:

• Facebook page
• website
• e-learning course on emotional intelligence