Barefoot Coaching for Vulnerable Groups

Concrete objectives: We set out to develop and test a two-tier education program for volunteers and professionals working to empower vulnerable groups to become more capable and willing to engage...

Concrete objectives: We set out to develop and test a two-tier education program for volunteers and professionals working to empower vulnerable groups to become more capable and willing to engage with their communities. The program is based on outputs from another Erasmus+-funded project called Hosting Empowerment (2020-1-DE02-KA204-007737), namely a self-empowerment booklet for vulnerable groups, or fewer opportunities groups, called ‘Innertopia’. Development of the training: * Tier 1: The Coach Training program teaches actual or potential convenors of peer support groups, and other interested volunteers, to lead and guide such a peer group through a collective empowerment process. * Tier 2: The Trainer Training program enables professional trainers to design and deliver the Tier 1 program, thus creating capacity to continue to train more coaches.

We successfully implemented the planned activities designed to achieve our objectives. - Kick-off meeting - Project menagement - TPM -Development of ecucation program: a face to face and an online training program to train barefoot coaches and coach trainers. -Two pilot trainings, one face to face and one online. -Implementation of feedback and improvements into the curricula = finalizing the course plans and material - Evaluation -Creating a handbook for the coaches and trainers used during and improved via the trainings, and for use in practice afterwards. -Piloting a registration process to connect and monitor the groups emerging from those trainings over an extended period after the project. - Dissemination

-Two sets of tested curricula, one for a face-to-face training, one for an online-training, each of them addressing both coach training and trainer training. -Innertopia empowerment handbook for group guides, as e-book and PDF; plus the addition of a 12th language (Turkish) to the Innertopia booklet library - 18 (face-to-face) and 12 (online) Barefoot coaches of whom 7 + 7 (face-to-face & online) also trained to be trainers who completed the programme and feel ready to use it in work with clients. - 7 Barefoot coaches (of those trained) who each started or planned their own Innertopia group. Plus several additional participants stating that they started to incorporate elements of Innertopia into their existing programmes - An additional audience identified, i.e. HR departments responsible for mental wellbeing in business and other workplaces: a new version of the Innertopia booklet being prepared for Dutch business language and appearance.