Our Stories: a practical storytelling guide for youth workers
After the completion of the Erasmus+ training course Our Stories, Average Youth Association together with the participants prepared a practical storytelling guide for youth workers. The guide was developed as one of the project results and brings together the methods, activities and reflections explored during the training.
1/31/20261 min read
"Our Stories" Erasmus+ training course gathered 24 youth workers and educators from Lithuania, Romania, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Greece. During the training, participants explored storytelling as a method in non-formal education: a way to support reflection, self-expression, empathy, group cohesion and dialogue on complex social issues.
During the training Average Youth Association together with the participants worked together to prepare a guide for other youth workers. It is organised thematically, so it can be used not only in similar trainings, but sessions can also be organised separately in other youth work settings. It includes activities on storytelling foundations, identity and personal stories, perception and framing, shared narratives, discourse analysis, storytelling in youth work, difficult topics, conflict management and participant-led workshops. Each activity card includes practical information such as suggested time, group format, materials, steps, debrief questions.
A key part of the guide is its focus on responsible facilitation. Storytelling can be creative and accessible, but it can also touch identity, belonging, exclusion, conflict and personal experience. For this reason, the guide highlights principles such as voluntary sharing, narrative distance, clear debriefing, avoiding manipulation and adapting methods to the group.
The training showed that storytelling can be more than a communication tool. When framed clearly and followed by meaningful reflection, it can become a structured method for learning, dialogue and youth participation. The participant-led workshops also showed how storytelling can be adapted to different topics, including environmental crisis, arts, motivation, creativity, exclusion, disability and teamwork.
The storytelling guide is available bellow and can be used by youth workers, facilitators, educators and organisations looking for practical methods to include storytelling in their activities.
