Aims:
- The revision of social roles, concepts and their characteristics that are of significance to the participants
- Familiarisation with the concept of conflict between entrenched positions and methods for its resolution
- Choosing a relevant social issue for the creation of a social project
- Acquisition of the skills involved in planning social work
Target group: schoolchildren of senior classes, students at colleges and universities, members of school and student councils. A permanent team of 10-15 persons is to take part in the Programme from each individual educational institution.
Duration: 2 hours
Short Description:
Sessions begin with a discussion on the relevant life values of participants, and how, fundamentally, these tend to focus on the same desires for everybody: to be near one's loved ones, to love and be loved. People live in order to develop themselves, to discover new things, to be needed...
The rest of the work concerns the participants discovering the variety of social roles by means of considering their shared personal experiences. In coming up with a personal answer to one of the most vital and difficult questions that teenagers have to deal with — “Who am I?” — the participants come to appreciate that belonging to this or that social group (role) or community comes with the imposition by it of various obligations. Membership in a social group leads to the internal adoption of group values, and the observance of unspoken rules and norms.
The idea of differences in the values of various social groups (roles) leads the participants to the concept of conflicts between entrenched positions and the impossibility of their solution when approached from diametrically opposed social roles (positions). Daniel Defoe's Big-Enders and Little-Enders cannot come to a consensus, nor can André Maurois's Fattypuffs find common cause with the Thinifers.
Finding a way out of such entrenched conflict is only possible by means of taking it to the level of the most basic needs of each participant in the conflict, as discussed at the very start of the session.
The participants then move on to planning social work. They compile a list of the social problems found in contemporary society, and choose one that is most important to themselves. This will then form the base for the specific social project their team will go on to plan. Each team argues the relevance of their selected problem, defining with the greatest possible degree of exactness their target audience and the project's proposed content, producing a project with aims that are clear, quantifiable, achievable, realistic and with distinct timeframes.