Outreach Youth Counseling

The six-month exploratory project on the prevention of group-hatred, bullying, violent extremism and other developments that threaten democracy was based on the insight that nobody comes into close and continuous contact with young people as easily as young people themselves - namely within the structure of their respective youth peer environment. Under favorable circumstances, young people can therefore have a very lasting interpersonal effect on each other in their environment. However, young people's social spaces are also often affected by scenarios of domination and intimidation or otherwise impaired by group-dynamic divisions and blockages. This is where sensitive environmental counseling can possibly help. However, various questions arise in this regard:

• How should low-threshold outreach youth (environment) counseling in the community be designed in order to support young people within local youth lifeworlds in having good and development-promoting effects on each other and to strengthen human rights and solidarity motives for togetherness?
• How can educational youth cultural work programs contribute to this? And how can - building on this - processes of personal development in a pro-democratic, social and human rights-oriented perspective be supported in short-term counseling formats for young people?
• In other words: How can young people who are affected by intimidation, bullying and group-focused enmity in their social space be encouraged in their ability to behave as favorably as possible towards each other, i.e. to turn away from each other at certain points, to confront each other in a measured way if necessary, but at the same time to enter into relationships and get involved and seek appropriate support and advice - in order to have an overall effect that promotes conversation, resolves conflicts and is thus pro-democratic?
• How can this be promoted, especially in structurally weak, difficult to access and high-risk social spaces? How can this - in the sense of environmental counseling - ultimately also have an indirect effect on those anti-social and destructive young people who do not see any need for counseling, but who are regularly the operators of these intimidation dynamics - and whose attitude to life is permeated by elements of group-focused enmity, bullying and violent extremism?

Based on these questions, the six-month exploratory project investigated how the worlds of professional psychosocial counseling, whether in the form of systemic or client-oriented counseling approaches, can move closer to the worlds of young people, from which they often seem very distant - especially in structurally weak areas and social hotspots.

The approaches developed by Cultures Interactive - youth-cultural school project days and workshops, narrative discussion groups, intervision groups for professionals, distancing training for individuals, systemic counseling for those affected by conspiracy narratives, the action concept for working with young people with an affinity for the right - are helpful starting points here. However, the implementation of low-threshold, community-based environmental counseling, especially in the prevention of right-wing extremism, is still pending.