Povel - Research report by CEFAL

Final report of research activities

This presentation has been produced with the financial support of the Daphne III Programme of the European Commission. Contents are the sole responsibility of Scuola Centrale Formazione and its partners and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission.

The project POVEL is the acronym for “Prevention of Violence through Education to Legality”. As the title suggests, POVEL deals with actions aiming at awareness raising and active involvement of young people into the prevention of peer violence, bullying, media violence and of violence linked to drug and alcohol abuse. This aim is pursued through activities of education to legality addressed to 14 to 20 year old adolescents. The project also pays special attention to promoting a healthy lifestyle and preventive measures, especially in the context of alcohol abuse and drug use, violence and addiction to Information and Communication Technologies, which nowadays represent key risks for the health and well-being of teenagers. Project goals are: ·

Increase in knowledge and understanding of phenomena of violence against young people and in particular in vocational training centres and schools. It consists in starting up virtuous processes which enable exchanges and collaborations between those involved in training and youth who, while debating on the basis of research instruments concerning violence, can become more aware of the phenomenon; it also consists in sharing knowledge and the proposed input through cooperative learning and collaboration tools, so that young people and educators together will become the protagonists of the creation of new educational resources for young people, which will be produced taking into account their own point of view.

Strengthening of the capacity to face violence towards teenagers through the definition and implementation of learning kits and tools for education to legality. It consists in turning teaching methods and supporting materials, knowledge gained through the research, integrated with the contribute of experts and fit for the context, into learning programmes.

Awareness raising on the need for measures of education to legality to be widespread in the vocational training centres and schools.

Testing of educational kits and tools.

Critical review and consolidation of lessons learnt.

Mainstreaming of the project results in order to ensure durable impact of the actions performed by creating favourable conditions for the diffusion with multiplier effect of the project results on the territory, also after the project conclusion.

Project partners POVEL is a trans-national project and is promoted by a partnership composed by private and public organisations from Italy, Belgium, Spain and France.

Italy Scuola Centrale Formazione (grant holder) is a not-for-profit association established in Rome in 1975; it is recognized by the Ministry of Labour, according to the Law 40/87 as a "National Association of Vocational Training Bodies", and included in the National register for research. SCF works primarily in order to offer a representative support and an effective coordinating action to all associates. SCF promotes and manages – directly and through its associates – actions for education, vocational training and counselling, with a specific interest in methodologies, innovation and transfer of best practices. SCF works mainly with public funding that comes from LLP Program, PROGRESS, Daphne, and from the Italian Ministry of Labour and Welfare as well as ESF at the regional level. SCF accounts 45 associates with almost 100 VET centres based in 11 regions (from North to South) promoting more than 15 million training hours in 2011 for adults and young people. At an EU level SCF takes part in the C.E.C. and has signed bilateral agreements with Istria Region, Galicia Region and more recently with the Generalitat de Catalunya. At a national level, SCF is a member of CONFAP (Italian Bishop Conference’s confederation of national and regional vocational training networks and organizations) and has promoted the creation of a thematic network on prisoners' training and inclusion (OPEN Consortium). SCF is certified according to UNI EN ISO 9001:2008 standards. Among SCF's members directly involved in the project there will be CEFAL-Bologna, which has 3 vocational training centres in Emilia Romagna, CIVIFORM and Opera Sacra Famiglia from Friuli Venezia Giulia.

The Province of Ravenna is a local authority with its own autonomy, which contributes (under art.114 of the Constitution) - along with Municipalities, Regions and the State - to the administrative system of the Italian Republic. As a public administration body, the Province of Ravenna is organised into several different Departments with specific competences according to the different tasks of a public administrative body. Administrative functions vested in the Province are: tasks related to upper secondary education and vocational training; labour market policies and social health; roads and transport; environment and agriculture; tourism and promotion of cultural heritage; waste management; administrative police. The Province also performs functions of coordination between the Municipalities for the purposes of economic, territorial, environmental and social health.

Amongst others, it is Management Authority for ESF resources for social inclusion, initial training and continuous training programmes. EFFEPI is a Temporary Association of Scope made up of 13 accredited vocational training organizations in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. EFFEPI is currently running ALL initial training programmes financed by the Region for the youth aged 14-17 years old, that means more than 3,500 teenagers. Besides vocational training, counselling, in-company experiences, actions to fight early school leaving, support to work placement are proposed by EFFEPI to young people in order to guarantee trainees’ success. EFFEPI is an associate partner in the project.

France Created in 1985, the Institute for Development and Training (ID Formation) is an association under law 1901 having for general object to ensure professional, social and cultural promotion in the whole Corsica. ID Formation is made up of a multidisciplinary team of trainers, people responsible for the business mission, educators, psychologists, doctors, psychiatrists, psychomotor therapists, nurses, ergo-therapists, mediators … In April 2008, ID Formation obtained the Certificate of Professional Qualification from the Qualification Professional Office of Training Organizations (OPQF – Office Professionnel de Qualification des Organismes de Formation). The association works in different sectors, one of which is the youth sector (ID jeunesse). Approved by the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Community life, I.D. Jeunesse has obtained a quality control label. I.D. Jeunesse takes part in the following actions: • Voluntary young building sites promoted by the Corsica Region: these programmes relate to 15 to 20 young people per year aged 14-25 years old. Each year, IDF is approved and financed by the Region to support vulnerable groups of young people to work placement. These actions are held in Bastia, Ajaccio, Portovecchio, Propriano, Balagne, Corte and Ghisonaccia, which represent 280 young people approximately per year. A standard 900hour-programme includes 250 hours in a company. • International voluntary young building sites co-financed by the Environmental Office of Corsica: 15 to 20 young people from different European countries are concerned annually. • European programme YOUTH: during the last few years, IDF carried out 3 YOUTH projects in Corsica, Italy and Slovakia. These projects included the training of trainers and educators. Moreover, IDF works with the Local missions of Bastia, Ajaccio, Portovecchio and of Corsica Centre together with mainstream education as regards prevention of violence and delinquency among young people aged 14 to 18 years old.

Belgium The FISSAAJ is a Federation of services, which, in compliance with the pluralism of its members, has the aim of promoting, supporting and defending the services set up for the physically, psychically or mentally disabled young or adult people or those socially in distress. It counts 311 affiliated services and institutions. In the field of services to young people and childhood, FISSAAJ has 91 members which are certified by the Government of the francophone Community and situated in the Walloon Region, and which employ about 1,280 workers. One of the priorities of FISSAAJ is to promote the exchange of good practices, collaboration between federations and other institutions, as well as the creation of innovative projects related to the evolution of our society. In the area of Youth Assistance, different services are working or have worked on projects related to the prevention of alcohol drinking among young people. These services developed tools to inform the public of minor alcohol-related harm. Information campaigns were developed in different districts, brochures had been distributed and prevention days had been run.

CEC (ComitĂŠ EuropĂŠen de Coordination)is a European network whose aim is to develop partnerships at a European level between organizations active in the fields of social and professional integration of vulnerable groups, the fight against exclusion, equal opportunities, support of people with disabilities, lifelong learning and sustainable development, in particular at a regional level. CEC is gathering 19 members representing around 750 associations (training centres, social cooperatives, social enterprises...) in 13 EU Member States. CEC has more than 14 years of experience in the management, coordination and dissemination of European projects. In fact, CEC has already carried out - in collaboration with its members many pilot projects (Equal, Progress, LLP, Research Initiative and European broadcasting in the areas of training, education, and support towards the employment of poorly qualified people, equal opportunity) and is a reference network for the establishment of partnerships for the realization of promotion initiatives at a European level.

Spain FundaciĂłn Privada Trinijove began its activity in training and socio-labour areas, with people in social risk of exclusion, in the year 1985. During this time we have been working in an active way to improve new measures and projects, with the purpose of overcoming the situations of social exclusion. The main guide-lines of our original action are: inclusion of young people, training courses in different areas, providing skills for inclusion and coaching, projects for prevention of drug abuse or drug taking, social enterprise and the fight against poverty and

social inclusion. Trinijove works with the Government of Catalunya, Ministry of Madrid, Council house of Barcelona, local authorities, AENA airport, Obra social "la Caixa", consortium of different enterprises, European projects and different associations and enterprises of different sectors that work close together with us for inclusion and contracting people in social risk of exclusion, mainly young people. Trinijove takes different actions with young people included in education curriculum of the scholarship education unit for people from 14 to 16 years of drug abuse or prevention of drug abuse, we also have some art therapy projects for people over 16 that have some kind of addiction. Trinijove is member of: - C.E.C. - ENSIE: European Network of Social Integration Enterprises. This report outlines the results of the first phase of research carried out through a quantitative survey and a subsequent qualitative survey.

PART 1 – QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS Introduction Research aims at understanding the social and family characteristics of adolescents and their experience about violence, especially related to peer relationships, media, alcohol and drugs. Research tools created by project partners have the dual purpose of investigating the quality and quantity of the phenomenon of violence among young people. The research phase wants to collect basic data to be processed in the second part of the project, when learning kits are to be produced. These latter will be targeted to youth whose characteristics, knowledge and experience on topics that the project staff already know through the survey. Therefore the creation of the questionnaire paid much attention to this aspect: on one hand gathering information, despite anonymously, on the general characteristics of the universe of young people that revolves around the centres/services of the project partners, on the other hand give the involved youth an input to think about the project themes to motivate them to deal with the second part of the survey and the project experimentation actions. The questionnaires, despite being typical instruments to gather information, are actually characterized as powerful communication tools that drive information and assumptions. In our case the questionnaire sent important information, contained in the questions asked, as concerns the connection between lifestyles and violence, the correlation between certain behaviours and violent situations and the importance of the quality standard of relationships – with peers and adults – for the general well-being of teenagers and the prevention of unrest. The research plan was prepared by Scuola Centrale Formazione and it was shared and validated among partners by e-mail and distance communication. The first step was to build a guide line for operators and staff of all partners to share the objectives and research methodologies. In this guide two research tools were presented: the quantitative tool and the qualitative tool. Quantitative survey The questionnaire is aimed at understanding various fields and at knowing the characteristics of adolescents (target 14-20 years old), the use of drugs and their perception of the different phenomena of violence. In particular the 71 questions (the questionnaire has 69 multiple-choice questions and 2 open questions) were asked to investigate: •

Background information on involved boys/girls: age, attended school/vocational training centre, family composition, place where he/she lives etc... ;

•

Lifestyles: work, health and nutrition;

•

Relationships: relationships with peers, friends, teaching/training/education staff and family;

•

Use of alcohol and drugs: experiences and feelings regarding the use of psychotropic substances;

•

Habits about media use, preferences, and communication through new technologies.

The choice of the survey fields and of the resulting questions is confirmed by the attention paid by the World Health Organization, for some years now, to the perception of health and lifestyles of pre-teens; the WHO started a survey, HBSC – Health behaviour in School-aged Children1, carried out in different countries to investigate the perception of health – and correlated behaviours – among pre-teens (reference target 11-15 years). The World Health Organization promotes a broad concept of health, as a resource of daily life, that includes, in addition to the physical dimension, also the social and emotional one. Moreover, the studies carried out by the WHO suggest to consider how the social and cultural environment affects the health of teenagers and also point out that teenagers health protection and well-being are essential factors for the prevention of social unrest and to counter the onset of anti-social and deviant behaviours. Our survey, despite being founded on the same assumptions of HSBC survey model, focused on two specific elements: the age of the survey sample and the starting assumption of a direct correlation between displays of violence and non-health-oriented behaviours (alcohol, use of drugs, bad relations in the peer group). An additional specific element is represented by the inclusion in our survey of the media and communication technology world as special contexts within which youth, more than anyone else, practice social behaviours, start relationships and can implement incorrect behaviours for his/her well-being. After designing the first draft of the questionnaire we shared the idea with our project partners, who played their part with some modifications. The final questionnaire version was translated into the national languages of partners (Italian, French and Spanish). Each version of the questionnaire was embedded into a “password protected” web page of POVEL’s website in order to allow access only to the survey sample identified by the partnership. It is important to stress that when preparing the questionnaire, some elements which would favour the return of answers by the youth involved were kept into consideration: 1.

Limiting the number of questions, despite in the presence of a broad field of investigation: in this case we considered the fact that the reference target could be “ reticent” to answer

http://www.hbsc.org/

too high a number of questions. On the other hand our questionnaire does not claim to give a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon under review but a general overview of the involved teenagers regarding the survey themes. 2.

Asking clear and accessible questions to our target: we considered that for the involved youth a clear formulation of questions and an express reference to actual facts and behaviours could help them identify and analyse the phenomena under review. On the other hand recent studies2 underlined how, for example in relation to peer violence and bullying, the categories used by researchers and by experts to identify the phenomena are not shared by youth. The boys/girls indeed easily identify what a â&#x20AC;&#x153;bullyboyâ&#x20AC;? is and how he behaves rather than describing the phenomenon of bullying.

Accompany, without influencing, the completion of the questionnaire: the chosen setting to complete the questionnaire and the presence of an adult guaranteed the return of a high number of completed questionnaires.

During the first transnational meeting held in Belgium in February 2011, partners also discussed and agreed on the breakdown of the research sample among the various involved regions so that the total sample (500 young people involved) would be compliant with the expected goal. Some differences, around the average value, between the sample dimension from partner to partner were necessary to take account of the nature of each partner (some of them are national / regional associations/ federations, the Spanish partner, instead, has a more local dimension). Partners also agreed to post the survey tool on the web, every time it was possible in order to have a real-time data collection and reduce transcription / interpretation errors. Then the questionnaire was anonymously administered during May and June 2011 to 696 students in total (51 from Spain; 120 from Belgium; 100 from France; 425 from Italy) with the support of a tutor/ facilitator. This value is higher than the expected one (500 young people reached by the research; 30% expected answers). In particular, Italian partners decided to submit the questionnaire to a higher number of their students (willing to be involved in the research) than anticipated, giving priority to classes that are going to attend at least another school-year in the same centre / school. This in order to be able to involve the same students in the second part of the project, i.e. the creation and testing of learning kits.

Tracy Vaillancourt, Patricia McDougall, Shelley Hymel, Amanda Krygsman, Jessie Miller, Kelley Stiver and Clinton Davis, Bullying: Are researchers and children/youth talking about the same thing? International Journal of Behavioral Development 2008 32: 486

Results of the quantitative survey

The first evidence of this commitment was the research output: the target value for this activity was a 30% of answers from a total number of 500 young people reached. Partners got almost 700 questionnaires back, i.e. nearly 100% of the selected sample. This data decidedly confirms the commitment undertaken by the partners in managing this phase of the project and also supports the idea that each project partner is for the reference target a reliable and trust-worthy interlocutor; as a consequence, the youth involved willingly accepted to answer. The total sample can’t be very homogeneous, as laws ruling compulsory education and vocational training are different from country to country and, to a lesser extent, also from region to region within the same country, and also some differences occur from site to site of each regional / National association’s member in terms of social – economic – cultural characteristics of young beneficiaries. Anyway, it was clear since the project proposal submission that the research wanted to know better the perception of violence and of risk factors among those boys/ girls attending training opportunities at partners’ centres, and this is what the project is doing. The focus on young people attending training activities at partners’ sites, and the choice of involving preferably boys/ girls who’re going to attend those activities from 2010-2011 to 2011-2012 ensures to the project the possibility to give continuity to the involvement of the same young people from the research phase to the creation and testing of learning kits, as this is up directly to partners. We analyse the macro areas with the main indicators emerged from the research: •

Different framework of research

•

Characteristics of the total sample

•

Family composition

•

Lifestyles

•

Relationship and bullying acts

•

Use and consumption of alcohol and drugs

•

Use of Media

Different frameworks In France we administered 100 questionnaires in 3 different centres. ID Formation is a vocational training centre. As regards young people, ID formation mainly works on their upgrading and (re) motivation along with building their professional project. The Local Inclusion Institution is an office serving youth. Each young person benefits from individual attention along the way. The reception offices give answers to questions related to employment, training as well as housing or health. PAIO is a Reception, Information and Career Guidance Office, it focuses first on school leavers or those who are facing difficulties. Young people are mainly school leavers, aged between 16 and 20, without qualification. In Ajaccio and Bastia, they come from specific districts: policy areas focusing on local development and fights against social and urban exclusions. In Balagne, Porto Vecchio and Ghisonaccia, they are mostly young with immigrant background.

In Italy, the 425 questionnaires were administered mainly in vocational training centres of two Italian regions (Emilia Romagna and Friuli Venezia Giulia), some of these members of the network of Scuola Centrale Formazione. In Emilia Romagna, the questionnaire was also administered within 3 high schools (Ipsia Lugo, Itc Ginanni, Ipssar-Riolo Terme) based in the Province of Ravenna. The vocational training centre in Emilia Romagna accepts boys and girls among 16 and 18 years old and it is composed of two-year courses, within different sectors (restaurants, electrical, sales, secretary etc...) and it allows students to achieve a qualification. On the contrary, in Friuli Venezia Giulia professional training centres accept boys and girls between 14-18 years and have three-year courses with professional qualifications (graphic designer, beautician, hairdresser, etc. ..). Often students attending this vocational training centre in Emilia Romagna come from a first year high school with no success. In recent years, in both regions, there was an increase in enrolment of foreign students, who often lack knowledge of Italian.

Belgian partner, FISSAAJ, submitted 120 questionnaires to 3 services/schools for a sample of over 100 children between 14 and 18. Below the description of these 3 institutions: Asbl la Mohinette: 15 young people from 3 to 18 placed in a service by the SAJ 3or SPJ 4from Liège. These young people are placed because they have some problems with their parents: alcoholism, drugs, abuse, maltreatment. Young people are hosted and mentored here and the staff also works with their parents or relatives. Institute “La Sainte Union” is a school of general and vocational services for children from different backgrounds. Main aim is to train students and young adults to become responsible citizens, able to complete their studies and their lives. Asbl Graine AMO’s main activities are: individual or family socio-educational support upon request; community action which covers all areas of life of beneficiaries in the environment that affects them: school, family, neighbourhood, culture. This action is intended, by improving the social environment of youth, to provide a comprehensive response to individual and collective problems and to develop a dynamic network. The service operates on a non-binding commitment. In Spain 51 questionnaires were administered by Trinijove which is located in a neighbourhood of Barcelona where the unemployment rate is around 20%. Trinijove here acts and works with young people living in the surrounding areas: Trinitat Vella, Baró de Viver, Bon Pastor and Santa Coloma, all with very high index of early drop-out of mandatory and regular school. Most of them remain on the streets, or else they end up in gangs or as criminals. They are young people at risk of social exclusion. They come to Trinijove to assist to training in a professional specialty that can help them get a job and leave this situation of social risk. The youth from Santa Coloma are involved in Schooling Shared, an external drive where they can continue studying the mandatory training and get the graduate school of Secondary Education. Characteristics of the total sample In the total sample there’s not a big difference of gender: 54% are boys and 46% are girls. Only in Belgium and France there are more girls than boys and in some classes in Italy (for example IPSIA Lugo and Cefal Villa S.Martino) are composed only by boys. This depends on the fact that some vocational training institutes in Italy, for the type of qualification they confer (mechanical operator, electrician etc.) are almost exclusively chosen by males.

SAJ = “Service de l’Aide à la Jeunesse” is a public authority acting only under the protectionist regime. The SAJ is moved, by his actions and advice, assisting young people in difficulty or danger and their pets. One objective of the SAJ is to find a solution to the problems to avoid judicial intervention. 4

SPJ = “Service de Protection Judiciaire” is a specialist support service which occurs after the juvenile court has decided an aid measure. Its role is to put it into practice.

The sample composition, in the case of our survey, is not especially important; it is however worth noting that, both boys and girls involved in the different phases of the project, responded to the input with a very similar involvement and motivation. At times we found gender differences when dealing with the proposed task but this will be mentioned in the qualitative analysis part of the report. The most common age who responded to the questionnaire is 17 years old, with some differences in each country: •

Spanish young people are mainly 15 years old

•

Belgium young people are mainly 16 years old

•

Italian young people are mainly 17 years old

•

French young people are mainly between 18 and 20 years old

Training courses attended by our sample are mainly formal education (81.5 % of sample). Family composition 84% of the interviewed has brothers or sisters (most of them has only one brother/sister). Families with both parents have an irregular distribution among countries: 25% in Belgium and France, 45% in Spain and 69.5% in Italy. The level of education of parents is different in each country, overall the most frequent level is high school certificate for both parents. 47% are satisfied with their relationship with their parents. Most young people live in the suburbs (43%) rather than the town centre (32%). Lifestyles ·

54% of the total says that he/she doesn’t smoke but there are differences among countries. In fact in Italy students who don’t smoke are 51%, in France 46%, in Spain 37% and in Belgium 78%.

80% of the sample doesn’t work because they are attending a training programme as expected. Only 10% of them occasionally works.

More than 50% of young people describes as “quite fine” or “fine” his/her health and doesn’t play any sports. The young people who declare to practice regularly sports are however almost 40% of the interviewed sample; most frequently selected sports are soccer, football (for boys) and dance and swimming (for girls). It is worth noting that especially girls declare to regularly practice sports. As concerns health perception data, correlations were made with the questions regarding the quality standard of relations, with peers and adults, but no relevant data emerges. It is on the contrary clear that boys show a more positive perception of their health status, compared to girls.

266 young people (62.4% of the sample) have at least the three main meals a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Among them, 105 have also morning and afternoon snacks (24.6%). 42 boys/girls say they eat only one meal a day (9.8%). Girls especially declare that they eat less meals a day than boys.

During the week more than half of the boys/girls goes to bed between 11 p.m. and 1.am.

18% of the sample sleeps 6 hours or less every night, without relevant difference among countries.

During the weekend, 43% of boys and girls go to bed after 2 a.m. but, regarding this percentage, there are significant differences among countries. In fact, in the Spanish sample, the percentage is 78% and in the Belgian sample, it is 16%. 5

Relationship and bullying acts The relationship with classmates at school/vocational training centres in the total sample are for 45% “Fine”: this data seems to be confirmed by other research on youth who believe to be, on average, satisfied with their relationships with their peers 6. Those satisfied with their relationships with their teachers/ trainers/ educators/ tutors are 58% “much”; this seems to be an especially important data that should be interpreted in the light of the second part of the project. It is indeed necessary to understand if the satisfaction expressed on the relationship with teachers, educators and tutors (educational figures in general) is for youth an actual resource in case of need. Equally positive for the sample is the relationship with their parents with which 47.7% believes to be very satisfied. In relation to bullying acts, most youth of the sample says that in his/her school/centre sometime bullying acts happen; the kind of bullying acts are committed by more than 2 people (42.4%) and they are mainly teasing (62%) and jokes (38%). Classrooms are the common places these bullying acts occur (41%). Girls less than boys seem to notice the phenomenon in their environment and regarding their role in bullying acts very few girls declare to commit them. The classmates’ most common reactions are: to have fun and root for him / her (33%) and pretend nothing happened (31%). About a quarter selected “try to help the victim”. When someone behaves like a bully, adults (teachers, trainers, educators, tutors, co-workers) intervene to defend those who suffer (41%) or are never present or are not aware of it (34%). The Belgian partners explained that the youth attending their centres, during the period of questionnaire administration, had a restriction on the time to go to bed so the results give this outcome. 5

www.istitutoiard.it

In relation to the bullying phenomenon the data we found must also be interpreted in the light of other surveys carried out in Europe on the phenomenon. The first data worth noting is that often bullying takes different characteristics among sexes: in boys bullying acts are mainly displayed through physical violence acts, on the contrary in girls bullying acts mainly take on the characteristics of psychological violence, abuse of power, longlasting persecutory acts. This characteristic, well recognized by international literature on the phenomenon, could be connected to the data, found in our survey, that for girls bullying acts appear less evident and recognizable. Other research confirms the data, found by us, that bullying is mainly a group act and is an element of belonging and participation in the group culture. International research also confirms other data that emerges from our survey: the first data concerns the class reactions to bullying acts that appear to be multiple, but the data that a good percentage of classmates has fun or pretends not to see is confirmed. In relation to the reaction of the educators, other studies confirm that sometime teachers do not realize what is happening because the forms of prevarication are subtle and not always manifestly aggressive. The studies carried out on the phenomenon of peer violence also stress the failure of individual actions (victim and/or bully) to treat the bullying phenomenon and suggest to take other roads. On the website Education.com 7 a consideration was published on the roles of bully and victim in bullying acts; this publication analyses how the role played in the peer group (bully or victim) tends to remain unchanged also when getting older. Then, what to do? An essential factor that can support change, according to the author of the publication, is to affect the individual awareness, both of the bully and of the victim. Our project seems to go in the right direction since it tends, especially in the qualitative analysis phase, to promote the boys/girls awareness of the phenomenon of peer violence. In the questionnaire, we proposed a set of values to which boys and girls could give their degree of importance; the most chosen are: friendship, love, and honesty. Use and consumption of alcohol and drugs In the third part of the questionnaire, we analysed the use and consumption of alcohol and drug abuse in young people in relation to the perception of the phenomenon, the consequences and effects that may ensue

http://www.education.com/reference/article/bullying-difficult-to-change/

Alcoholic beverages 39% of the total sample drink â&#x20AC;&#x153;during the weekend when I go out with friendsâ&#x20AC;? while 32% of the total sample only drink at special events. It is noted that in the 20% of the total sample of boys/girls who never drink, there are important differences between countries. In fact, in Spain 33% of boys/girls say they do not drink, 30% in France, 23% in Italy and 0% in Belgium. Most boys/girls drink during the night (69%) and they drink with peers (60%). The collected data confirms the importance of the group as a place for socialization and learning but also as an amplifier of bullying phenomena or assumption of unfair behaviours (alcohol and drugs). There is definitely a correlation between the bullying phenomenon that appears in the group and alcohol drinking or drugs use: at the bottom a same need seems to appear, that is the need to belong to the peer group, the need to acquire popularity and credibility and drinking alcohol can be a chance for socialization. If we want to investigate what they drink and how much they drink, we can observe the data of the total sample reported in the following table. Frequency

Rate

Soft drinks

289

41.5

Wine

110

15.8

Beers

289

41.5

Spirits

310

44.5 Tab. 1

31% of the total sample declares to drink more than 3 glasses of alcoholic beverages. Regarding this question there are many variations among countries and 31% of the total sample who drink more than three glasses is supported by the Belgians who represent the highest value (43%). The motivation that drives the boys to want to drink is often fun (50%), followed by: to feel better (17%), to feel less inhibited and overcome shyness (13%). The total sample said that they drink alcoholic beverages because they like their taste and the mood that raises (27%). Some studies carried out at an international level, for example the already mentioned WHO HBSC, stress the increase in propensity of the youngest to drink alcohol. It appears that youth start very young to drink and the data is confirmed both at an individual country level and at a European level. Drugs

In the total sample, 26% of the boys report having used drugs at least once in their lifetime. Within the sample there are many differences among countries. In fact •

Belgium 24% of its sample

•

Italy 25% of its sample

•

France 21% of its sample

•

Spain 47% of its sample

Marijuana is the most used drug, then cocaine (especially widespread among Italian boys) and synthetic drugs. With respect to the age they first took drugs, many people don’t answer but among French questionnaire respondents it seems that boys and girls make very early use of drugs (many begin before 13). Boys say they do not take drugs everyday (only 2.4% admit taking drugs more than once a day). 17% of the total sample makes it a rather occasional consumption. Most frequent motivations in taking drugs are “Because friends push him/her to do so” (almost 60%) and “look for a buzz” (56%). Perception of friends taking drugs:

Don't know/ No answer None Less than half More than half Total

Rat e 4.7 39.1 36.6 19.5 100

Tab. 2

In this field the data is very uneven among countries. The highest rates in Italy, France and Belgium are in the answer "none of my friends take drugs" . Otherwise in Spain the most common choice was "more than half of my friends take drugs”

The knowledge about the harmful effects of drugs/alcohol

Rate I don't know them None They can kill Mental illness Heart disease Respiratory diseases Other diseases

23.7 2.7 60.3 46.3 49.0 42.8 18.0 Tab. 3

Also on information or disinformation, data is very different. For example, 70% of French people claim not to know the effects while only 4% of Belgians chose this response. Presence of serious consequences after drinking alcohol and/or taking drugs: 21% of the total sample said “YES” and among the countries we counted: 12 hospitalizations, 5 ethyl coma, 2 withdrawal of the driving license. On the use of psychotropic drugs international studies also stress that the experimentation of drugs is one of the most frequent risky behaviours during teenage years. The diffusion of the use of illegal substances seems to show an increase, especially as concerns the age when one begins. International trends show how the widespread increase in the taking of drugs in Europe and worldwide is accompanied by a parallel reduction in the age one begins taking drugs. Use of Media In this last part of the questionnaire, we analysed the use of some media about possible forms of violence. With the consolidation and diffusion of technologies, one witnesses the propagation of new forms of peer violence, characterized by the use of technologies as the “field” of interaction. The phenomenon, identified by the expression cyberbullying, is investigated and analysed by studies and research8 and seems to feature some special characteristics including the fact that online abuses of power tend to be underestimated by teenagers, thus becoming more insidious. 8

In this respect it is worth mentioning the Daphne

ECIP (European Cyberbullying Intervention

Project) project Cyberbullying in adolescence: investigation and intervention in six European Countries which studied the characteristics and the diffusion of cyberbullying in Europe (Italy - Emilia Romagna and Calabria - , Spain, England, Greece, Germany and Poland) among teenagers of senior secondary high schools.

Indeed, scholars agree in claiming that the massive and widespread use of technologies by young people is often not accompanied by adequate education on how to use them. Our survey asked the youth some questions concerning the daily use of media, both from a quantitative perspective (how many hours a day do you use the reported media?) and a qualitative perspective (how do you use your mobile phone? Which films do you prefer to watch?). The most common used media is the mobile phone for messages; in fact 24% of Italians and 33% of Belgians claim to use it more than 7 hours a day. A question asked was if the boys/girls use the mobile phone to make videos and responses were reported in the followed table. Use of video with mobile phone

Frequency

Rate

I don’t take pictures and videos with my phone

142

20.4

I watch them alone

392

56.3

I send them to friends

236

33.9

Tab. 4

The only medium our trainees share with other people is the television. Our total sample shows that trainees watch television mainly for movies (51%) and TV series (almost 30%). Italians and French watch more news (more than 20%) than other countries. Books are the least used media by our students; in fact, 42.8% say they don’t read any book. Luckily there are differences among countries and Belgians read more than their colleagues and they read mainly novel and comics. With respect to the use of games with PC’s or other consoles, there are many difference among countries; if we look at gambling games for example: Italy 16%, Belgium 8%, Spain 18% and France 14%. The most common kind of games is action games. The web is used by our students and the most visited webpages are Facebook, YouTube, Google, messenger and Wikipedia. 81.7% of the total sample has a profile on a social network, where the modality of sharing are mainly ideas, thoughts (almost 59%) and post photos/videos of himself/herself and other friends (56.5%). 33.5 % declare they don’t use any restriction (limitations) of privacy on social networks.

The use of chat or instant messaging is common for 56% of students. 326 young people (47% of the sample) say that, through chat, they met someone that they didn't know before. Moreover 115 boys/girls say they had a bad experience (invasion of privacy and psychological violence) using this kind of communication. This data confirms that often youth approach technology as a virtual place for socialization, underestimating the risks and thus exposing themselves to unpleasant and dangerous experiences. In the last question of the questionnaire we asked â&#x20AC;&#x153;What is the latest violent episode seen on television or the Internet last month?â&#x20AC;? and many students answered the death of Osama Bin Laden and the ill-treatment of animals.

PART 2 – QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS Introduction: theoretical framework

Following the questionnaire which gathered quantitative information, the project provided for an in-depth qualitative analysis of the issues under research, in order to analyse some problems and experiences of the boys/girls involved. In order to seize the perception of the boys/girls on the issue of violence we chose to propose some group activities, to be carried out together with educators and trainers, to part of the total sample of youth who answered the quantitative questionnaire. In total, ca. 30% of the youth involved in the first part of the survey participated in this second part. The project partners agreed on a number of activities to propose; the purpose of the second part of the survey is to delve into the data gathered by the first part, significantly affecting the awareness of the final project recipients, the youth, on the problems of peer violence, by means of primary prevention actions. Prevention actions, especially in teenage years, developed in the last decades in the field of studies and research of Community psychology. Community psychology deals with the improvements of life quality through the promotion of coping skills, both at a community and individual level. The concept of coping includes the set of mental and behavioural strategies that are implemented in order to tackle potentially stressful situations and consists in the ability of being able to manage the situation but also the emotions deriving therefrom. Therefore, Community psychology, on the contrary of other psychological disciplines, does not set the objective of addressing a condition of full-blown unease but the achievement of a state of well-being, to be developed not necessarily starting from conditions of unease. It does not only try to avoid or reduce expressions of unease, but to favour the positive and dynamic integration between the individual and the environment. We can therefore claim that the strategies employed by Community psychology are preventive ones. Community psychology does not only set out to act on the individual and social structures, but on the transactions among the different levels of individual – groups – systems and networks of systems. The focus is not just on the individual but on the level of equilibrium and existing consistency among the different levels, a status that was defined by Murrel as the “psychosocial

agreement”9 status, meaning the degree of existing harmony between expectations, abilities of the individual and requirements of the community. From these remarks one can draw an important indication for the design and implementation of prevention actions: they should always be binary, focused both on people and on their contexts. In the socio-educational field in general one talks about primary prevention and refers to activities which prevent so-called socially inadequate behaviours; these are actions which foster life quality, social well-being, the enhancement of skills and the personal empowerment, without necessarily having to deal with situations of malaise or unease. One of the factors which more heavily influences the perception of well-being is given by their possibility of actively taking action against the conditions they live in, to feel like they are empowered to determine their life conditions. On the contrary, one’s perception as feeling passive and powerless contributes to an onslaught of feelings such as frustration and alienation. Participation, involvement, responsibility, control of the events are all positively correlated to the perception of personal well-being. This results in the importance of developing empowerment, i.e. personal abilities and resources. Multiple programmes to favour development and foster the abilities of pre-teens and teens were tested starting from theoretical assumptions of community psychology and prevention. Obviously, for this age range, the sectors of application were mainly schools. These programmes also include actions aimed at preventing bullying acts. Their purpose is to increase the awareness of the youth involved, foster the problem- and conflict-solving ability trying to integrate the cognitive aspects with emotional, psycho-physical and interactive components of the personality. In general two types of activities are carried out, those aimed at spurring participation, involvement and research and those that involve several components of the school environment: students, teachers, school managers and other staff. The theme of bullying – and the one, more general, of youth unrest – is strictly connected with emotional education. Girls and boys show that they have reasonable rationalization abilities on social relationships, understanding of meanings of behaviours and abilities to rationally read the emotions of another person; they are however less equipped in the ability of deep emotional contact (prerequisite of a true and not superficial empathetic understanding and participation in the mood of the other person), in "being able to be" in the emotional situation of the moment, in showing aggressiveness in its original meaning of "going toward" (too often replaced by pervasive anger), in being able to lean on the significant adult and draw from this relationship the necessary support, the knowledge and social skills suited to disentangle oneself in interpersonal relationships. 9

Murrel S. (1973), Community psychology and social systems, Behavioral Publication, New York

Increasingly often one comes across young people with an "adult" mind, an adult ability to manage strength and power relationships, to manipulate relationships with peers and adults, to avoid contact and the minimum forms of liability to their behaviours; but, at the same time, they are extremely "small" in trusting adults, being able to lean on and ask for help in time of troubles. The work with pre-teens and teens sometime shows how they need the presence of an adult to bring clarity to the relationship, i.e. able to help them read and decode the emotionality that is present in the group, also when it concerns conflicting or contrasting emotions. The notion of emotional intelligence, as described by Howard Gardner 10 in its two forms, intrapersonal and interpersonal, was developed in its multiple components and practical consequences by Daniel Goleman11, who distinguishes two main sub-categories:  personal competences: referring to the ability of seizing the different aspects of one’s emotional life;  social competences, referring to the way in which we understand other people and we relate to them. Personal emotional intelligence includes:  self-awareness that makes us able to attach a name and a meaning to our negative and/or positive emotions, helping us understand the circumstances and the triggering causes; more in general it allows for a self-assessment of one’s abilities and limits, in order to be able to set realistic goals, then choosing the more adequate personal resources to reach them:  self-control that implies the ability to be in control of one’s emotions, which does not mean to deny them or suppress them, but express them in socially acceptable forms. The inability to manage one’s emotions may indeed lead to act inappropriately and maybe to exaggerated aggressiveness towards other people. Those who are in control are usually able to behave appropriately to the situation, keeping account of the rules of social living, recognizing one’s responsibilities and mistakes, complying with the commitments undertaken and fulfilling the tasks assigned;  The ability to feed one’s motivation by also keeping it when in trouble or when things do not go the way one was expecting or hoping for. The ability of motivating oneself is made up of a fair amount of optimism and initiative, attitudes which push to pursue one’s objectives, actively reacting to failures and frustrations.

10 11

http://www.howardgardner.com/ http://danielgoleman.info/

Social emotional intelligence is made up of the set of characteristics which allow us to positively relate to other people and to constructively interact with them. It includes:  empathy that is the ability to recognize emotions and feelings of other people, ideally putting us in their place and understanding their respective points of view, interests and inner demons. Being empathetic means perceiving the inner world of the other person as if it were ours, however keeping the awareness of his/her otherness from our points of view;  communication, that is the ability of talking to others, matching the explicit content of the messages (conveyed by words) with one’s convictions and emotions (involuntarily revealed through body language). Communicating effectively also means being able to listen and ask questions, paying real attention to the emotional responses of our interlocutors. According to Goleman, emotional intelligence can be developed through adequate training, mainly aimed at seizing feelings and emotions, ours and theirs, directing them constructively. Some correlations were noted between the lack of emotional intelligence and youth unrest, here are some examples: girls who cannot distinguish between feeling anxious and being hungry are especially exposed to food disorders like anorexia or bulimia. For boys, uncontrolled impulsiveness during childhood leads to a greater risk of violence; in addition, the inability to face anxiety and depression increases the likelihood of using drugs and alcohol. The activities proposed in the second phase of our project survey are inspired by these assumptions and are mostly groups activities, with the participation of boys/girls and adults and aimed at enhancing personal and group awareness on the issues of violence and the use of drugs and alcohol. A description of the four activities proposed to the work groups of the different countries follows.

The proposed activities

The proposed activities were four; each country could choose what to work on and how many activities to work on. As we’ll see later on there were cases when the activities were changed and integrated by the individual work group. The operational indications on the activities were given to the teachers/educators who then managed them with the groups of boys/girls. Finally we would like to note that only part of the youth who took part in completing the questionnaire also participated in this second phase of the activity; the percentage of participation varies according to country but, on average, it is 30% of the total sample of boys/girls who took part in the first part of the survey.

First activity

Product: represent one of the forms of violence as examined by the project through images or drawings The boys/girls were asked to select from magazines and dailies, or simply through drawings made by the students themselves, images which they think portray one of the types of violence under the project, and then stick them on personal sheets or boards. The boys/girls were then allowed to choose among different forms of violence: media violence, peer violence, drug and alcohol-related violence. When managing the group activity the educator/teacher invited each kid to motivate his/her selection of images to the class. Objective and meaning of the proposed activity: the image language belongs to expressive communication, i.e. a type of communication, sometimes artistic one, that tries not just to express logical and consistent concepts but, above all, emotionally significant aspects of the issue that one wishes to analyse in depth. Through images, the communication process becomes much quicker and more intuitive, this is why it is perfect to represent motivations, expectations, wishes, fears, inhibitions and relations of which the subject is not always aware. Here the use of images for the emergence of personal experiences of a student or a group can be rated among projective methods, i.e. methods which tend to make clear aspects that the subject does not always wish to or is able to tell but that can emerge more easily from the interpretation of the chosen images as well as from “incidental” aspects like colours and spaces used, their size and position. On the contrary, we could say that the use of drawings and images is part of non-verbal communication, it therefore consists of a form of communication:

unable to express abstract concepts

analogue.

unable to express logical relations (neither…nor…; if….then…; because…; although…;).

timeless.

unaware

ambiguous

This is why it is important to give some time to contextualize and verbalize express meanings through images; in this phase the adult who follows the work of the boys/girls proposes considerations that tend to highlight the meanings attached to images and that tend to show the emotions expressed by images, it is important that boys/girls learn to read emotions through images. The educators will use triggering questions to enliven group discussion and interaction  “What could have happened?”  “How does the image subject feel inside?”  “From what do you realize it?”  “Did you ever feel this way?”  “When?”  “How did you behave then?” A possible different version of this activity consists in the “dramatization of emotions” that is dramatizing different situations through which to express different feelings. The different moods played out at the time of dramatization can be subject to group discussion. It can be very useful to take pictures or record short videos during this type of activity for analysis and discussion. Dramatization must be introduced by the educator through triggering questions which help the youth better get inside the parts that they will play, for example:  “Did you ever happen to be afraid?”  “When?”  “What scares you?”  “How do you feel when you are afraid?”  “What do you think when you are afraid?” or:  “How do we usually recognize the emotions of others?”  “Did you ever happen to observe a sad person?...happy person?...”

 “How are the eyes of a sad person?...happy person?...?”  “How is his/her brow?”  “How is his/her mouth?”  “What is the position of his/her body, arms …?”.

Second activity

Product: encouraging youth to find appropriate solutions to face some problems, through the writing of a personal letter During this activity we asked the boys/girls to write a personal letter to one of the main characters of the stories told below. The purpose of the letter was to give suggestions or advice to the main character of the story to help him/her face his/her problem. Mark’s story Mark is 17 years old, he lives at home with his mother, his parents are separated. He hasn’t had any contacts with his father for a couple of years following a very heavy fight caused by Mark’s nagging request to buy a scooter which his father decided to reject. Mark has many friends and has a girlfriend, two years younger than him, he is the leader of his group of friends and when they go out on Saturday night he often drinks too much. Last week he ended up in hospital with an alcohol level of 2 mg/l in the blood, a broken nose and two bruises on his back. He started a fight with two guys who, because the bar was full, had accidentally spilled on him the two beers they were drinking. Mark got mad and started throwing punches against both guys who reacted heavily. Now Mark is home from school because of the pain on his back and nose and is looking forward to taking revenge. Lucy’s story Lucy is 15 years old, she is a shy and introverted girl. She attends the second year of high school and could not make any friends in her class. Her classmates, especially Caterina, Giulia and Grazia treat her positively bad. From the end of the first year of school they started ripping pages off her books and notebooks accusing her of being the best of her class only because she sucks up to the teachers. Recently in the locker room, the group of Laura, Martina and Giada pulled her hair and threw in the toilet her spare t-shirt that she should have worn after P.E.. Lucy never talked to anyone about what happened but every night she cries herself to sleep and lately she’s been thinking about changing school.

Kevin’s story Kevin is 18 years old, has always been good at school but is very weak emotionally. Kevin went out with Sara until six months ago, they had been together for three years and she dumped him for another guy. Kevin is very sad and cannot wrap his mind around it, this is why lately he has been trying to distract himself with drugs. He started smoking joints at school during break, while walking home from school and, often, on Saturday night when he goes out he takes an ecstasy pill before going to the disco. At school his grades dropped sharply and his marks are very low on four subjects. Last Saturday, after taking an ecstasy pill, he called Sara (his ex-girlfriend) to ask where she was with her boyfriend and threatened to hit her new boyfriend. After the call Kevin stumbled into Giacomo, the guy who deals him drugs outside the disco. Giacomo had gone there to collect the money that Kevin owed him for the last drug supply (joints and pills). Kevin did not have money to pay his dues and this sparked the reaction of Giacomo. Giacomo hit him and some of his friends joined his attack against Kevin. Kevin was heavily hit and they took him to the ER. Today Kevin is still very upset with Sara and is convinced that it is her fault that he is hurting. Kevin often talks to 2 friends, Luca and Paolo, who cannot help him quit drugs. Marta’s story Marta is 16 years old and her dream has always been to enter the world of entertainment as a model or ballerina. Marta is very attractive and has a perfect body. She loves being noted and showing off, and hopes that one day somebody will call her for her big break in that world. In August last year she modelled on the runway for a women’s boutique of the town she lives in and a few days later a man asked her to become Facebook friends, sending her a message to explain that he was contacting her for work. Marta was very happy and hoped that her dream was coming true, so she accepted his friendship and gave him her phone number. He called her and asked her to send him some pictures (in bikini, in lingerie ...) and she did not hesitate to send him everything. For a few days she did not hear from him and Marta feared he did not like her. After a few days he contacted her to tell her that she had been selected for a 2-month trial job, convincing her that it would help her make her big break. However the job was for a porn chat line and he wished to meet Marta in person the following week. 4 days before the meeting Marta is unsure, she started having doubts on the man’s credibility and she is afraid to talk to someone because she fears she will make a bad impression.

Objective and meaning of the proposed activity: this activity tends to develop coping abilities. It is one of the typical activities of a preventive and promotional approach based on the conviction that youth unrest can be fought by equipping boys/girls to cope with problems, leveraging on their available resources.

In concrete, this activity tends to place boys/girls before problems close to their reality and encourage them to find solutions through recommendations to give the main characters of the stories. The stories are deliberately created by educators and researchers and contain much input to connect this phase of the activity with the questionnaire submitted in the quantitative analysis phase. The theme of the survey, explored through the questionnaire, in this second activity is proposed to youth in the form of life stories. The themes proposed by the stories concern the relationship with adults and peers, episodes of violence and bullying, use of drugs and alcohol, emotional relationships and virtual relationships through social networks. These stories are made up but they are very plausible and through the input of putting oneself in the place of â&#x20AC;Ś. the youth on one hand give the survey additional (qualitative) aspects in relation to the issues under review, on the other hand they increase their individual abilities which allow them to actively control their life; this activity helps strengthen skills for the management of new experiences or problems. This activity, as we mentioned, is part of the initiatives aimed at the promotion of coping abilities that start from the assumption that teenage years are a productive adaptation period in which the subject finds him/herself faced with many important changes and numerous social and development requests that can translate into a stressful psychological experience. In particular, this happens when a teenager perceives a sharp rift between the requests that are part of his/her process of individual emancipation and his/her actual possibilities of coping with them. These activities aim at teaching teenagers to identify stressful elements in their life, to recognize their consequence at a physical, cognitive and emotional level, to implement adequate coping strategies. They are aimed at strengthening and improving personal resources, such as: -

general problem-solving and decision-making abilities

general cognitive abilities (critical thinking, creative thinking)

self-control abilities

interpersonal abilities.

In terms of method, all the programmes for the development of coping abilities use the group as a natural work setting and act on three levels: cognitive, emotional, relational and strategicbehavioural. Their effectiveness is connected to the possibility of starting changes not only in the field of knowledge, but also in attitudes and lifestyles. For their implementation, these programmes require sensitive and trained educators who are prepared to work with pre-teens and youth.

ď&#x201A;§Third activity

Product: encouraging boys/girls, through team work, to create a commercial on the prevention of different forms of violence This activity included team work in sub-groups of 8-10 students who had to make a commercial on the prevention of the following forms of violence: peer violence (bullying), violence and drug abuse, violence and alcohol abuse, media violence. The boys/girls were given the following input: -

Think about a target audience you would like to address

Think about a slogan, the message you would like to give

Think about harmful behaviours and their consequences

Think about how to avoid them or prevent them

Act out the actions you chose

Think about which music you can add

Edit the video

Objective and meaning of the proposed activity: when creating a commercial, the decision of which images to use, unlike an impulse choice that mostly proves the emotionality of the person who makes it, is followed by a period of thinking and rationalization which gives rise to significant implications. When processing the motivations based on which selection was made, the group is driven on one hand by the idea of expressing the implicit attitudes on which the selection is made hence the awareness of the students; on the other to start a discussion and debate that, as with focus groups, is the foundation of the prevention and behavioural change processes. The commercial also adds slogans to the images; the slogans are the fruit of a creative process comparable, despite using a different language, to the process stimulated by image analysis. This layered process does not only guarantee a more in-depth analysis of the issues to be dealt with but also the involvement of a higher number of students who could privilege a media instead of the other. An additional thing to consider is the strong presence of commercials, videos and clips in our culture, and, in particular, in youth culture. Technologies make it easier and easier to make and share short videos and their strength in catching the boys/girls attention and positioning themselves as primary communication media compared to the others is rather clear (television, YouTube etc.).

Surely the appeal of videos for students is greater than the one that can be exercised by a written text, on the other hand it is also true that “TV” culture is often bearer of stereotypes and simplifications that are not of help to in-depth analysis. This is why the mediation and leadership of an expert adult who can lead the boys/girls to an effective use is paramount.

Fourth activity

Product: writing a critical text, paper article, describing the characteristics of today’s boys/girls on some issues This activity asked the boys/girls to write a paper article of around 2000 characters which could picture the issue of youth violence. In order to perform this activity, the boys/girls were given the following input: -

Identify a theme to your liking between media violence, peer violence, use of drugs and/or alcohol with resulting violent behaviours

Keep your focus on boys/girls, their habits, the use/abuse of drugs

Write in a straightforward and simple way a text of around 2000 characters

When writing the text, give examples supporting your claims

When writing the conclusions, repeat the themes and the opinion of the writer, giving ideas for in-depth analysis or proposing questions and doubts

Objective and meaning of the proposed activity: out of the four proposed activities, this can be defined as the most “academic” one. The homework given to boys/girls is a typical school homework even if it is useful to learn more on the data collected by the quantitative analysis. The paper article helps the boys/girls give different information on their level of knowledge of the themes dealt with and the level of development of their critical thinking on the matter. Out of the proposed activities, this is decidedly the one that involves more directly cognitive and critical analysis abilities on the issue of peer violence. The strength of this activity, used as a qualitative survey tool, is that through the writings of boys/girls it is possible to get a comprehensive picture of the analysis of the perception of the phenomenon, only outlined by the quantitative analysis.

Figures on the activities performed

The classroom activity was attended by a total 239 boys/girls, divided as follows between the different partner countries: -

ITALY: 143 boys/ girls (108 from Emilia Romagna; 35 from Friuli Venezia Giulia) = 33.6% of the boys/girls who took part in the quantitative analysis

FRANCE: 35 (+ Calvi’s ones) boys/ girls = 35% of the boys/girls who took part in the quantitative analysis

BELGIUM: 43 boys/girls = 35.8% of the boys/girls who took part in the quantitative analysis

SPAIN: 18 boys/girls = 35.3% of the boys/girls who took part in the quantitative analysis

In terms of activity selection, in most cases the first activity was chosen, the one on violent images. This activity was performed by 115 boys/girls in Italy (108 in the Training Centres of Emilia Romagna and 7 in the Training Centres of Friuli Venezia Giulia), 35 boys/girls in France and 18 in Spain. No one from Belgium chose this activity, but on the contrary all the Belgians involved chose to work on the writing of personal letters (Second Activity). Instead the first activity was chosen by all the boys/girls in Spain but with a difference in terms of delivery, which we will mention later. The second activity was chosen in total by 83 boys/girls of which 20 Italians, 43 Belgians, 20 French. It is worth mentioning that despite being chosen by a remarkable number of boys/girls, the products made for this activity (number of letters written) are less because the youth, in most cases, worked in groups. The third activity was chosen by 46 boys/girls in total of which 11 in Italy and 35 in France. In this case, too, the products delivered are less because the activity was made in groups. The fourth activity, as already explained, is the least successful one; surely the fact that it was, compared to the other proposals, an “academic” activity counted and one should also consider that the other activities proposed expressive languages more in harmony with young people and more used by boys/girls to express ideas and feelings. We can surely claim that, when choosing an activity to perform, the youth preferred to “talk” about the issues that concern them favouring an emotional and unconventional language that hits the heart and sensitivity rather than a theoretical language that mainly uses the cognitive channel. The fourth activity was only chosen by 10 boys/girls, all of them in France.

ď&#x201A;§The activities performed by each partner

In order to uniform the return of the products made by each partner within the field of the second phase of analysis the lead partner prepared a qualitative data sheet. The sheet defined which elements to return for each classroom activity; these elements concern the products made by the boys/girls but also elements concerning the context in which the activities were performed (how the classes or groups were made up) and the process i.e. the way in which the activities were performed. During the qualitative surveys, the context and process elements are essential to give full meaning to the data gathered and the products made. Each partner received the CRITERIA FOR QUALITATIVE SURVEY sheet (attached hereto) and filled it at the end of the activities and returned it to the lead partner together with the products made. The filling of this sheet allows us to make comparisons between products made by different partners within the same activity and allows us to analyse the products made within a context framework that helps us give them full meaning. In addition, we should not forget that the products of this phase should also be related to the data collected during the quantitative analysis phase. As concerns the first and third activity (selection of images and creation of a commercial) the partners were asked to return elements concerning: -

How the class is made up : how many students, division by genders, presence of foreign students

Atmosphere in the group/class: behaviours of the students during the activities, quality of communicative interactions among boys/girls

Quality of commitment and motivation of boys/girls during activities

Strengths and weaknesses of the proposal, noticed during the activities

Summary of the main written and oral messages emerged from the groups interaction

As concerns the second activity (production of a personal letter to one of the main characters of the four stories presented) the return by the partners included, in addition to the texts in the original language of the letters written: -

Some information on the authors of the letters (age and gender)

Some information on the suggestions given by the authors to the main characters of the stories: does the author suggest to ask an adult for help? Or a friend /a classmate? What solutions are suggested to face the problem of the main character?

Finally, they are asked to analyse the type of language used by the authors

For the fourth activity, in addition to the products made by the boys/girls, the partners were asked to send information on: -

The main idea argued in the text

The type of language used: formal or informal

The quality of the message: pro-active, ascertaining, consistent or inconsistent

ď&#x201A;§What emerges from the partners reports

Before analysing the products made it is fit to stress some process and context elements which emerge from the partners reports. For the first and the third activity we have some very significant context elements available. First of all, how the classes are made up: from the returns of the Italian partner groups it emerges that the classes where the activity was performed are high-multicultural-complexity classes since, in all classes, there is a massive presence of boys/girls from other nationalities. At the same in one class, out of a group of 16 students, there are 7 different nationalities. This data on the multicultural composition of the classes is only this significant for the Italian partner. As concerns the gender composition of the classes, the groups were balanced except for two boys-only Italian classes, but this data was already written in the quantitative survey. As concerns the class atmosphere the educators who followed the boys/girls during the activities report as follows: -

Initial difficulty and mistrust towards the proposal and the project themes: the educators report that at the beginning the youth were caught off-guard by the proposal, maybe because it appeared to be very different from the usual classroom activities, and they expressed an initial resistance that resulted in joking, embarrassment concealed by little collaborative and slightly troublesome attitudes. After this initial mistrust, though, all the groups worked and became productive;

A good atmosphere and mostly a good willingness to verbal interaction: boys/girls are very willing to take part in the introductory talks and to talk about their experiences on the themes proposed by the project. This element appears to be especially important since, aside from the activities per se, these young people, who already answered a questionnaire on the same issues, express a need to talk and to tell their experience and their idea in a direct way;

Enthusiasm for different expressive and communicative methods from those usually proposed in the school context: the work with images and the creation of the commercial allowed the boys/girls to express their ideas with different expressive media and this was very appreciated by some groups;

Individual episodes of resistance were noticed: some girls had problems performing the activities proposed or clearly avoided them. This is just a minimum percentage on the total boys/girls involved.

In the style of communication among young people, which in most cases was good and full of debate, some rigidity emerged in the different roles routinely played by the youth in the group: the leaders enjoy the respect of their peers and have time to express their ideas; on the other hand, the ideas of the others are criticized and at times mocked. Non-verbal communication often showed impatience, criticism and judgment. These negative aspects were especially reported by Italian groups where it is worth mentioning that the verbal interaction part of both activities was greater since at the beginning of the activities a brainstorming session was held. Brainstorming, considered as one of the techniques to trigger creative thinking, works very well in group activities since the ideas of the other participants of the group spur the ideas of each participant and help generate new associations. Also in our project, brainstorming on the violence theme resulted in a number of free expressions which were catalogued by the educators according to “macro-categories”. The following labels were identified: -

Motivations (what the boys/girls think mainly moves acts of violence): politics, sports, drug, alcohol, racism, mafia

Means (the vehicles of violence): beating, bullying, wars, homicide, rape

Feelings and moods (the emotional consequence of violence): wickedness, anxiety, fear, weakness

Places (the most representative scenarios): family, school

Victims: women, children, animals

Tormentors: law and order, family, bullying

Types (the different faces of violence): verbal, mental

Channel (through which scenes and images of violence can be seen): TV

The following comment was made by the educators on the brainstorming activity: This labelling allows us to observe with greater clarity some information on the perception of violence of participating teenagers. First of all, it is significant to notice the strong presence of words that are reminiscent of “motivations” of acts of violence. Many boys/girls assigned to violence political and racial hatred origins, or more simply sports disagreements. In all cases, the common element is conflict, understood as opposition or contrasting ideas, with more or less organized and violent outcomes. On the contrary, the terms “drug” and “alcohol” are of a different nature: they were mentioned by the youth as substances which facilitate the triggering of violent actions in relation to their abuse.

The word “means” includes all the words referring to the different ways and forms that an act of violence can take. Violence practiced through physical strength (mentioned in terms of beating, war, homicide and rape) is the most perceived by the youth. Bullying, understood both as physical and psychological violence, appears in five brainstorming sessions out of seven, showing its strong perception. The frequency by which the boys/girls underlined different moods and feelings referred to both tormentors and victims is equally important: the victim is seen as a scared, fearful, weak and depressed person, while the tormentor is portrayed both as wicked and weak. As concerns places, it is interesting to see how the most mentioned are those of greater socialization and emotional involvement, family and school, ambivalent places, safe on one hand but turning into dark places of fear and loneliness. The most mentioned victims are those apparently “weaker”, women, children and animals. In the role of tormentors two categories already mentioned previously appear again, bullies and family members, next to law and order. The latter is accompanied, when verbally explaining the item, by comments often with express reference to seen rather than experienced episodes. Non-physical violence mentioned by boys/girls were called by themselves “verbal and mental”, with reference to mockery, insults, cruelty, emotional deprivations. Compared to physical violence, these types of violence seem to take second place, they are less mentioned and accompanied by a less judgmental attitude by the group. From this analysis, information media and media in general seem to be fully excluded. Only three groups mentioned TV as a tool to “know” violence. Analysing table 1 it is possible to notice the presence of other items which refer to media (films, press, web, videogames), even if the cyber-bullying or other types of violence typical of the new means communication were never mentioned. This absence indicates likely little knowledge and sensitivity towards these “new” themes. As concerns the organization and performance of the activities, some groups reported initial difficulty and phenomena, even if isolated, of resistance (or even refusal) against participating in the activities. In general, educators report that the groups worked well, spontaneously organizing from within with a division of work. In some work groups from the start the leader figure emerged who coordinated work, with the consent and approval of the other members. The performance of the activity brought forward a fruitful exchange of ideas within the groups and at times an exchange of personal experiences in relation to the issues of violence.

The proposed theme of the activity, that is violence, was especially appreciated: the boys/girls showed that they were interested in the theme and that they had direct experience and ideas on the issue. The boys/girls involved also greatly appreciated the possibility of freely expressing themselves on the proposed themes, without fear of being judged. Some educators report that some students, usually little motivated and not very available towards proposals, were greatly involved in the activity and showed a real motivation towards the themes and discussions. The discussions in work groups were one of the most appreciated aspects for the students.

The analysis of the products

The following analysis comments the products made, divided by type. For some products, a summary is made and the most significant examples are analysed.

First Activity: collection of images and production of posters

The first activity was performed in three different countries: Italy, France and Spain. The images were developed in very different ways according to country. In Italy the boys/girls, after a brainstorming session led by the educators, produced a first group of posters, through which they stressed what had already emerged from the brainstorming session. Their posters have in common the representation through images of the answer to the following question “what do you think violence is?”. Many posters are introduced by headings like: “violence in our opinion”, “violence according to young people”, “violence is” , “violence”. The images chosen in this group of products refer to various fields of violence and do not focus on a specific field; war violence is greatly represented through images of weapons and war scenes, violence against animals and women. The images of children and scenes of poverty from the Southern world countries are also recurring. Bullying scenes are also present, but in a lower number. It is significant to notice how, in this group of posters, images taken from comic strips are often present, considered as examples of episodes of violence. A second group of posters made by the Italian classes stands out because of a different approach. Surely the products made must be analysed also thinking that many of the youth involved attend graphic designer courses; their products are not actual posters with collages of images but graphic productions which represent a message against violence. In this case, the dominant theme that emerges is bullying and drug-related violence. The graphic messages have a special emotional impact and are meant to impress the emotions of the audience. In this case, too, cartoon characters are used (The Simpsons) but the type of image is not less impressive, on the contrary! The head of the family, Homer Simpson, is chosen, holding a brain in his hand: the slogan says “No to psychological bullying”. In the case of France many images were chosen which referred to violence in sports, peer violence and violence in the family. Many of the images chosen are commented by a sentence introduced by: “I chose this image because …” .

In many cases, the boys/girls refer to personal experiences and this allows us to broaden the representation of violence that emerged from the quantitative survey; in the comment to the images more than one young person refers to peer violence which happens in his/her school or to violence in the family and between parents that also happens in his family. “J’ai choisie cette image parce que mes parents se disputent tous les jour set ils disent des choses horribles que ma petire soeur entend. Après elle me demande ce qu’elle a fait puor les mettre en colère et elle n’est pas heureuse.” “J’ai choisi cette image parce que dans le collège au j’allais il y avait souvent des bagarres après l’école mais sans raisons, juste pour voir qui est le plus fort. Mais les coups sont vrai eux”. A separate comment should be made on the products made by Spanish boys/girls. In the case of Spain all the youth worked on the images, so they focused on the first activity, but what was produced is not a graphic representation or a collage of images, like we’ve seen so far, but a photo album and two short videos. The photo album represents a dramatization of moods: the boys/girls expressed with their faces different moods. As mentioned in the introduction, the representation of the moods is an important activity within the field of emotional education; if the youth are able to “mime” the moods, they train to recognize them especially in other people and this empathetic recognition can prevent situations of peer violence. Each boy/girl, in total 20, showed his/her expression when he/she is happy, sad, bored, surprised, thoughtful, scared; in total the photo album contains 120 images representing as many face expressions. The same students then worked with the teacher on the analysis of a bullying episode: through a set of questions they explored the possible reactions to an episode of pocket picking among classmates. The boys/girls were asked: “how do you react if you see someone stealing something from someone?” and “how do you react if someone steals something from you?” The answers were different but they had the same basic idea in common: I react if I see that if I engage a fight I can win; if I see that the person who steals is stronger than me, I don’t react and I keep quiet; or “I take action if the person they steal from is my friend otherwise I do not take action”.

Based on these answers, two short videos were made which represent two possible reactions to bullying: in the first video three boys/girls steal a mobile from a couple they meet and no one reacts; in the second video the same group of boys/girls steals from the couple but the two, a boy and a girl, react chasing after the bullies. In this case, too, the technique used was dramatization. Dramatizing different situations through which one represents the role of the victim and of the bully can be useful to trigger additional discussions within the group. The recording of short videos in this type of activity can be very useful, both for the analysis and the discussion that will ensue, both because the video is an “attractive” media for youth. When seeing the video, some questions help the students better analyse the told episodes, for example: “Did you ever find yourself in this situation?” “When did it happen to you?” “What do you think the victims of this act of bullying felt?” “From what can you understand their mood?” “What do you think they thought at that moment?”

Second activity: the letters

The second activity was performed in three different countries: Italy, France and Belgium. The letters written all have the same structure, therefore they are very easily comparable. On this second activity, the educators who followed the youth also returned reports following the indications given by the lead partner. In this report, despite considering the summaries made by each partner, we propose a different categorization of the products made (letters) and we propose an analysis of the ways in which the boys/girls dealt with the situations submitted by analysing the letters sent to each main character of the story. First of all it is necessary to stress that the situation that the boys/girls favoured when writing the letters is Kevin’s story. Kevin is the addressee of most letters in all countries, in Belgium it even is the only case dealt with. Please remember that Kevin is the eighteen-year old boy who was left by his girlfriend and started using drugs.

Compared to the other stories we can see that Kevin is the oldest main character (18 years old compared to Mark who is 17, Marta who is 16 and Lucy who is 15), this could be a first factor which caused the boys/girls to choose this case, since Kevin’s age is closer to the age of most those who took part in the activity. In our opinion however the choice to favour this case by the boys/girls should also be traced back to the quality of the story: Kevin’s story is the only one that makes a specific reference to a relationship and the use of drugs. In addition Kevin, unlike Mark, the other male main character of the stories, shows himself as a weak boy and not a bully, we could almost say that he is an “ordinary” boy like many, who is going through a difficult period. Choosing it could mean that it is the story which most youth of our project identified with. As concerns the letters addressed to Kevin we analyse the following. Almost all letters express solidarity and understanding for what Kevin is going through due to the end of his relationship with his girlfriend Sarah; in some cases the boys/girls present their own situation, or the situation of a friend, as concerns sad love stories that however always find a solution. The most frequent comfort is that in the world there are many girls and even if now it is difficult to believe Kevin will be able to find a new one. In many cases a relation is established between the use of drugs and the possibility of winning Sarah back, that seems to be Kevin’s objective; some letters advise Kevin against taking drugs since this will prevent him from winning Sarah back because she will not want him as a drug addict. One letter clearly states that girls do not like druggies. In some cases, the consequence of his gesture is explained to Kevin: drug is bad for your health but most of all through drugs you have to see dangerous people who will not help, you incur economic problems because drug is expensive. Finally: what advice is given to Kevin? In many letters Kevin is advised to quit the drugs and get help. The important thing to report is that out of the possible sources of help parents are rarely mentioned and teachers or other school staff are never mentioned - please remember that Kevin goes to school and is also very good. Possible helpers are friends or general rehabilitation centres or psychologists. This data should surely be stressed since it is in conflict with what these young people stated in the quantitative survey, that is that they have a good relationship with their family and teachers. Clearly when completing the questionnaires the boys/girls stated that they have a

positive relationship with parents and teachers but not as good as to be considered a go-to person in case of problems. Finally, some letters give apparently bizarre but significant advice: practice sports, yoga, what matters is communication. It appears that the boys/girls clearly know that some places are good for positive relationships and good psycho-physical health! Another case in which many boys/girls took an interest is Lucy’s; Lucy is the victim of a rather typical case of bullying and also in this case many can identify with her. The abuse of power to which Lucy falls victim very clearly mirrors the episodes which, according to the quantitative analysis, many boys/girls recognized as happening in their schools. In their letters, the youth advise Lucy to be brave and to show the three bullygirls of their class her true nature, without being trampled on. Almost all letters advise Lucy to talk about it to her parents and teachers. This is different from the letters sent to Kevin but it is necessary to give some explanations. The appeal to parents, in the letters to Lucy, seems to appear more like the appeal to someone who can understand you, help you and support you rather than like the appeal to an authoritative intermediary with the school world. It is as if the abuse of power to which one is subject at school should be reported to parents as parties concerned in the relationship with the school. In Lucy’s case, teachers also come into play: in this case it is worth noting that when teachers are mentioned there is always the clarification to address a teacher one feels good about: in this case it appears that in order to deal with bullying acts teachers are not, per se, by virtue of their role, authoritative adults, but rather, if there are teachers with whom a good relationship is established, the latter can be of help in case of conflicts within the school. Finally, many letters advise Lucy to talk to the School Manager or Dean, especially with reference to Lucy’s intention to change school, Lucy is advised not to quit her current school without first talking to the dean, reporting the reason why she wants to quit, so that the school management can take action. In this case, too, it is worth mentioning how the ways identified to solve a typical relational conflict between peers refer to the school administrative management. As concerns the identification of the youths with Lucy’s problems, there is one letter in particular which tells a personal experience. A French girl says she found herself in the same situation as Lucy and of talking to her parents who advised her to move forward without being too influenced by her classmates who had picked on her. This girl, whose name is Maria, says she solved the problem by finding new friends in another class. This gave her new tranquillity and helped her face school life and bullying acts.

This story can confirm what was already shown by the quantitative analysis data, that is that in bullying acts the roles (bully and victim) tend to crystallize and remain unchanged over time; effective problem-solving actions are those which act on the system and not just the individual. The story told by Maria in her letter to Lucy seems to confirm this data: Maria does not solve her situation by overcoming her condition of victim but trying to avoid the effects through the involvement of other subjects of the school context.

The other two cases, Mark and Marta, received way less letters. Marta, the girl who would like to become a model, receives through the letters clear advice which warns her against the web traps. In this case the youth are very clear on the risks represented by web-based meetings and exclude the possibility that through this media Marta can reach her professional objective. Finally, Mark’s case did not receive many letters. It is useful to wonder why no one identified with Mark’s story or why almost no one had something significant to tell this boy. Compared to the other stories, Mark’s features a rather significant data; in Mark’s story there’s a clear reference to a conflict with his parents. Mark is also a rather violent boy who drinks too much. Mark receives understanding for his fight with his father; he is advised to make peace with his father since you may always need parents. As concerns alcohol consumption Mark is advised to quit since, especially because of alcohol, the episodes of violence which were detrimental to Mark took place. In this case it is interesting to note how two distinctive elements of the case, alcohol abuse and conflict with a parent, are interpreted by the boys/girls. From the onset alcohol abuse is connected to violence and compared to drug consumption, stressing that it causes addiction. With reference to the conflict with parents, Mark is suggested to try to understand the reasons and the way of thinking of this father “Il vaut mieux ne pas se disputer avec ses parents car on peut toujours en avoir besoin.”

Third activity: commercials

The commercial activity was performed in two countries: Italy and France. In France the youth conceived the slogans and thought through the situation to represent but did not make a video of it. The Italian group, on the contrary, made a video which surely represents one of the most significant products of this part of the project activities. Let’s start to analyse the products made by the French boys/girls. Three groups chose to work on the commercial: two groups made media-violence slogans and one group though about a commercial on drug and alcohol-related violence. The slogans conceived for media violence were: C’est pas la vie ça ! Ca c’est la vie !! and Le virtuel n’est pas la réalité

Within the group, the boys/girls discussed about harmful behaviours and their consequences and they identified, as possible consequences of excess exposure to this type of violence: -

The risk of not distinguishing anymore between reality and fiction;

The risk of not giving any more value to true crimes,

The possibility of making imitation attempts in real life

Possible real health disorders.

In order to prevent the consequences of this type of media violence, the boys/girls think it is useful to talk to parents and raise their awareness so that they reduce exposure time and especially help children to distinguish between reality and fiction. As concerns violence as a consequence of drug or alcohol abuse the third group created a sort of story/script: a young man beats his girlfriend because he suffers from withdrawal symptoms. When he manages to get the drugs and overcomes withdrawal symptoms he is sorry and regrets the violent act he accomplished but it is too late because his girlfriend does not want him back anymore.

In this case the youth stressed how the use of drugs can result in losing control and expose consumer to commit violence, both verbal and physical, against others.

The video of CIVIFORM students: a case of good practice

As mentioned above, within the third activity, the boys/girls from CIVIFORM Education Centres in Italy made a video as prevention activity of bullying and cyberbullying. The activity was performed within a longer time span and was a process to raise AWARENESS on VIOLENCE within the original relational contexts, starting from the education context. The type of violence the activity focused on concerns cyberbullying (violence through IT media, such as e-mails, instant messaging, blogs, social networks,…). This activity can be defined as AGGREGATIVE PREVENTION: this is Primary Prevention, aimed at increasing the subjects skills (empowerment) to cope with the risk of unease (for example cyberbullying); it is aggregative because it is carried out in a “small – group” context (max 15 people), it encourages the group to perform a protective function and to strengthen healthy behavioural models (“being able to remain” in a group, positive leadership, perceiving the group’s strength), it allows to involve a group of boys/girls in the critical situations of the relational context (experimenting communicative, problem-solving, … abilities), it triggers dialogue between adults and boys/girls that focuses on reciprocity of exchange of experiences, information and opinions. It also wishes to be contagious, because it aims at expanding its effects on the context to which the boys/girls belong, involving “peers” and reference adults (teachers, parents, educators,..) The product made by these young people is of high quality, both in terms of technical features and content. The video, running time 4 minutes and a half, was made by 11 students of the third-year class. This is a black-and-white video which integrates sound and images. The slogan, placed at the end of the video, is the following: stacca la spina della violenza accendi il buono che è in te! The video stars a boy who is singled out by some of his classmates; we see him in class, he is hit by some classmates, they pick on him while a girl films everything on her mobile. The other classmates, who are not involved, are laughing. In the next scene, we see the girls who filmed the scene publish the video on a social network, together with others.

The next scene takes place in the school park, the boy arrives and tries to sit on a bench alone, but the bullies join him, push him and bother him; the same girl from the previous scenes keeps filming on her mobile. The boy leaves and enters the classroom; the room is empty, it is probably recreation time, he sits down in a corner. Now the other classmates sit next to him and make encouraging gestures, a boy unplugs a plug from the wall and a girl quotes the slogan.

The video, as we said, in addition to its technical complexity, is very well conceived in terms of content. The work made by these students is surely to analyse the phenomenon of bullying and cyberbullying to represent it in the few minutes of this video. All the elements which emerged from the quantitative analysis are reproduced in this video, let’s see some: -

The bullying acts are committed in a group;

The other classmates just watch and in most cases have fun;

The bullying acts often are characterized by joking and mocking, they are not always acts of physical violence;

They are often committed in school and in neighbouring places but hardly in the presence of adults, in the video adults never appear;

The victim does not react, does no task for help, his/her reaction in most cases is escaping or isolating;

The act of cyber bullying is also often interpreted as a job, as mocking;

“Traditional” bullying and cyber bullying are connected and often concurrent.

Fourth activity: paper articles

As already mentioned above, the fourth activity was not chosen by many; only a dozen of French young people worked on writing a paper article in relation to the set themes: peer violence, violence and use of alcohol and drugs, media violence. The texts written concern all the set themes and supply additional elements that help us get a clear picture of the perception and awareness of the boys/girls involved in our project in relation to the theme of violence. Let’s analyse the writings by themes.

Drugs- and alcohol-related violence: from the writings of the boys/girls the awareness of the consequences linked to the use of drugs and alcohol clearly emerges. It looks like the boys/girls clearly know that the use of drugs and alcohol can detrimentally affect their lives, even causing very serious, also lethal consequences. What also emerges from the writings is a sort of tolerance towards consumption, as if it was, for them, inevitable; boys/girls do not exclude the possibility of using drugs and drinking alcohol they simply try to steer away from excessive drinking/drug taking, writing “Je pense que pour l’alcool, il ne faut pas demander aux jeunes de ne pas boire du tout, on ne le fera pas, on est jeunes!!!l. The motivations that move them to drink/take drugs are linked to the group and to enjoying being with the others, to fun, to the need to become braver and smarter in group happenings. This data is consistent with the findings of the quantitative survey from which a trend of weekend and group drinking emerged. There is still a doubt that, when answering the questionnaires, the boys/girls did not return a very faithful representation of reality in terms of drugs taking; please note that, except for the Spanish sample, in the other cases a low percentage of interviewees declared taking drugs at least once and they also declared that they though that, also in their group of friends, not many of them took drugs. The knowledge of the effects and of the motivations that emerges from the writings would lead one to think that, as concerns taking drugs, these young people have greater direct experience than what emerges from the quantitative survey. Surely the data on drinking seems to be more consistent.

An additional factor that should be stressed as concerns what emerges from the writings but can also be found on the texts of the letters is that smoking, drinking and taking drugs is interpreted as useful to overcome some situations, not as detrimental in any case, what matters is not to go too far “Le cigarette … nous aide a gérer le stress des examens par example.”

Media violence: as concerns this theme the youth recognize two types of risks, on one hand a risk that we could define as passive of exposure to violent or pornographic images; a second risk is interactive and is linked to the use of the web and social networks. In the first case the responsibility is not the boy/girl’s but the adult’s, both as the author and as the controller and educator; films, images, reports that show bloody or sexual images are

sanctioned by the youth who give the adult two different types of responsibilities, the adult who produces this media and the adult who does not properly educate the boy/girl, but especially children, to use the media. The consequences that the youth identify for this type of product diffused by media, TV, papers and the web is the beginning of deviant behaviours, especially in relation to the sexual sphere; exposure to porn can lead the boys/girls to experience their relationships based on violence and lack of respect for the other person.

In the second case, interactive risks, the boys/girls acknowledge that there is a direct responsibility of youth as users of the web and usual players in virtual relations. The risks featured by using the web and social networks appear quite clear. The stress is on possible unpleasant situations, seeing your own pictures published on inappropriate websites, having unpleasant encounters, having one’s intentions being misunderstood etc. The stress of legal aspects and compliance with rules is completely missing: in relation to this, it appears that young people are completely unaware that the use of the web requires compliance with some rules.

Peer violence: as concerns this form of violence from the writings considerations emerge both regarding the forms of peer violence and its motivations. As concerns the forms, reference is made to violence as a rather widespread form of communication and interaction among young people; mention is made to forms of blackmailing and ransom and also to the violent relations between boys and girls. Moreover, reference is made to the different violent behaviours of girls from boys; girls are portrayed as especially cruel because they practice violence for pure pleasure or for revenge. As concerns the reasons for these behaviours, the explanations appear to be rather predictable: missing reference points, early adoption of “adult” behaviours without yet being social and relational mature, imitation of behaviours seen on TV.

It should be noted that in these short texts no reference is made to school violence and the typical bullying acts: if in the quantitative survey the youth answered that they recognize the existence of bullying episodes in their educational and school contexts, in these writings there is no mention of bullying and its various expressions. The only significant data concerns the role, just traced, of the victim; also in this ordinary violence between young people the victim adopts the same behaviour that is recorded in situations of bullying: “les jeunes n'osent pas en parler parce qu'ils ont honte”.

ď&#x201A;§Conclusions

To conclude this summary that includes the data gathered by the quantitative survey and the descriptive elements inferred from the products made in the qualitative survey, some elements worth noting emerge. First of all, we should note the fact that the quantitative survey alone would not have returned a significant representation of the phenomenon of peer violence in the facilities and institutions which participated in the project. The answers to the questionnaire supplied some data which only through the second part of quantitative survey could be fully interpreted. The interpretation of this data allows us to find some key elements that can make room for further in-depth analysis and interaction with boys/girls on violence. Surely one thing worth stressing is the adult figure that emerges from the survey: the boys/girls declared that they enjoy a good relationship with adults (answers to questionnaires) but in the second part of the survey a perception of the adult, especially parents and teachers, emerges as weak in the relationship, little authoritative and that is not a resource and a safe port in case of problems. A second element concerns the stress, very clear in the products of the qualitative analysis, of the fears of youth in the face of the developmental task of growing and becoming adults: reference is made to stressful situations, fears of not living up to the task etc. In these situations of emotional pressure, smoking, drinking and taking drugs is seen as help and support. In relation to the theme of health please note that the boys/girls of our project reveal poor awareness and at times also poor knowledge of the basic elements: their conviction seems to be that certain behaviours are not harmful for health as long as they are kept under control; from what they state, the awareness that some behaviours are always harmful for health does not emerge. At this point, to conclude making room for further discussion, one could say that in training and educational contexts (schools, professional centres etc.) it is necessary to work with young people to foster emotional intelligence as the fundamental ability to manage interpersonal relationships and govern oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pathway of personal development. The theme of well-being, too, can be considered, in educational and training contexts, as an all-inclusive content to be used to consolidate in young people the awareness of health as precious asset to safeguard and protect with adequate personal behaviours.

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