HA, HA, HA…FOR HEALTH, LEARNING AND WELL-BEING

24-31 March 2017 – Maiori (Amalfi Coast – Italy)

“Ha, Ha, Ha…for health, learning and well-being” is an 11 day training course organised by ACARBIO in cooperation with Solidarity Tracks (Greece) and CREFAD LOIRE (France) with the participation of other associations from European, Mediterranean, Balkan and Eastern/Caucasian countries. This training course involved a total of 13 countries (Italy, Greece, France, Spain, Poland, Romania, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Tunisia, Palestine, Armenia, Georgia) with 26 youth workers who acquired competencies & skills about the pedagogical aspect of laughter, so that they could practice this sort of activities with young people in the future. During the training in question the participants had to think up and develop new skills about laughter without reason, other than innovative methods for using this activity in non-formal education.

Specifically, the objectives of this project were:

1. To allow the group of youth workers with different backgrounds to acquire new competences on the advantages of the practicing of laughter without reasons, as well as on the means of using this potential in the interest of the young people and people with special needs or handicapped.

2. To encourage the youth workers to enhance their knowledge and their working methods and to become able to take initiative to practice laughter without reason, for the benefit of young people and the local communities.

3. To allow the participants to understand in practice the value of unconditional laughter within a given human group (group of young people, group of mixed ages, professional, vocational group, etc.).

4. To allow the youth workers who participated in the training to launch some experimental workshops targeted at various audiences, in order to put into practice their knowledge and experience and also create online courses about laughter, targeting young people.

5. To create a pedagogical online course on Moodle platform about laughter for young people and people with special needs. The aim was to improve and mutually exchange our knowledge, experience, working methods and initiatives in favour of young people, the citizenry of our local communities and, lastly, to emerge that experience elsewhere.

As a result, the participants organized educational workshops on “laughter without reasons”, for the benefit of the young people and the various categories of the local public. The participants were divided in 6 groups to develop the workshops based on “laughter without reasons”. Every group had different “potential” target groups in minds when developing the workshops. Every workshop is explained in details, from max number of people, recommended target group, time of the activity, objectives, preparations phases, warm ups, laughing session, etc. In order to disseminate this technique of education and to broaden the beneficiaries in large scale, the workshops created during the training course were also made available on the internet through our platform Moodle: “e-learning to non-formal education”, where participants uploaded every session in details. Furthermore, each participant took over a “mentor” role on the on-line training about “laughter without reasons”. All the workshops are accessible on the Moodle platform at http://e-evs.eu/course/index.php?categoryid=7

Once they were back home, the participants started promoting these E-trainings among their colleagues and friends, assisting and supporting the young learners and keeping up the cooperation with their peers in monitoring the interaction of the beneficiaries of the on-line seminars and evaluating their impact. They also carried out targeted activities and initiatives on the “laughter without reason” philosophy for the benefit of the local young people, with the frame of partnerships with local organizations.

The beneficiaries of the above-mentioned dissemination activities are basically organizations and institutes who are engaged with the informal education, as well any person who work with the Youth (youth workers, Youth project coordinators, mentors, young people with various profiles and background, school teachers, entrepreneurs, health institutes, Psychotherapy Centers, Centers for the social integration of the young or for support youngsters with special needs, young people who are interested on the topic). By the end of the project, the participants had also created an e-magazine with the help of our graphic facilitator Boroka Balint.

The project was financed by the Erasmus+ program through the italian NA “Agenzia Nazionale per i Giovani“.