Growth Mindset – Building trust for Growing mindset

Start Date: 15/05/2022 End Date: 15/05/2023

Project Vision:
Our vision is to improve the lives of socially excluded youth through education and promoting a growth mindset.

Identified Problem:
Socially excluded youth have fewer opportunities than their peers. It is proven that social exclusion produces severe and long-term damage to the living conditions, social and economic participation, emotional life, and health status of youth (Youth Social Exclusion and Lessons from Youth Work, 2018). They are less likely to attend university and more likely to be unemployed or in poverty.

These factors shape the mindsets they develop. Their environment often does not encourage strengths such as believing in themselves, challenging themselves, and learning from their failures to achieve their goals. They typically lack families to rely on for support, and if their beliefs in their own capabilities are not motivating – the chances of them leading fulfilling lives are not good (https://www.oecd.org/social/soc/36165298.pdf). These mental traps often lead youth to believe that only one path is available – an apathetic wait for the future where any effort will be futile. These beliefs frequently lead to destructive behaviors such as substance abuse, further exacerbating their situation.

According to UNICEF (https://www.unicef.org/romania/stories/building-towards-success), “Children with a fixed mindset believe that mistakes and failures result from limited abilities.” On the other hand, “Students with a growth mindset more often master, persist when facing challenges, and recover better from occasional failures (“Teachers’ Professional Competencies in Self-Regulated Learning”, September 2020).

Overall Objective:
To develop an eLearning course for youth workers to build confidence with socially excluded youth to help them develop a growth mindset and find intrinsic motivation in their day-to-day activities.

Specific Objectives are:
– Promote a growth mindset among socially excluded youth who have communication and confidence issues
– Demonstrate that the abilities of youth are not fixed but rather mutable, depending on the effort put forth to achieve what is most desired in life!
– Assist socially excluded youth in reaching their full potential by fostering resilience and persistence
– Empower socially excluded youth through opportunities that enable them to achieve their goals in life

Our target groups are:
Socially excluded youth (over 16 years old);
Youth Workers, who work with socially excluded youth

Conclusion:
There may have been many failures in their young lives, and this could be one of their first successes where involvement in project activities adds real value to their lives. If socially excluded youth could only imagine the possibilities they could achieve in their lives, then there would be no socially excluded youth. By creating such an environment and space, we could all live up to our full potential.