SEED
Growing spaces for dialogue and belonging
WHAT IS
SEED?
Many young people today experience exclusion, polarisation and conflict, whether in their schools, their communities or online. For youth workers and facilitators, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. Creating a space where everyone feels safe to speak, where differences are acknowledged rather than ignored and where disagreement doesn’t end the conversation takes skill, reflection and the right tools.
SEED responds to this need by combining two perspectives. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) offers a practical way to express ourselves honestly and listen with empathy, even in tense situations. An intersectional perspective helps us understand how different aspects of identity, such as gender, background, ability or social status, shape the way young people experience the world and how they are included or excluded. Together, these approaches help build youth activities where belonging and participation are not just goals, but lived experiences.
Bringing together experience from three countries, the partners learn from each other’s practices to build something stronger than any of them could alone.
Project Highlights
Erasmus+ priorities
WHAT WILL SEED DO?
Shared understanding. Through exchanging practices and reflecting together, the partners explore how intersectionality and NVC can support youth participation and civic engagement, looking closely at how young people experience exclusion and conflict and what helps create genuinely respectful dialogue.
Stronger facilitators. Through training, peer learning and co-designing activities, youth workers and facilitators build skills in dialogue facilitation, inclusive group work, conflict-sensitive facilitation and participatory learning.
Lasting tools. The partners turn what they learn into concrete methodological tools and organisational practices that support dialogue, belonging and democratic participation, ready to use in programmes with young people and to share with the wider youth work community.
WHY IT MATTERS
By the end of the project, the partner organisations will be better equipped to design and facilitate youth and civic education activities that make a real difference. SEED contributes directly to two Erasmus+ priorities: “Common values, civic engagement and participation” and “Inclusion and diversity in education and youth work.” For CSF, it is also a chance to question our own practices and grow alongside the young people we work with.
UPCOMING ACTIVITIES
The partners recently held their introductory meetings, marking the start of the project.
We will share updates, reflections and resources here as SEED develops. Stay tuned as we plant the first SEEDs.
PARTNERS
SEED is carried out by Civil Society Forum e.V. together with Gutenberg Association (Romania) and Foundation RE (Poland), and is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.
