Coaching in schools - Porjecto +

The Projecto + is a project that wants to support teen student, for a year, with coaching in schools. This new approach will help teen students acquire some social and emotional skills.

Coaching is a development tool that allows you to define and achieve your goals. It can be applied in several areas of your life. In our case, we are specialized in developing social and emotional skills in adults but specially in teenagers.

Nowadays, our teenagers are facing several problems of self-esteem, self- motivation, self- knowledge, lack of compassion, isolation from the outside world,  and  low capacity of assertive communication.

Our goal is to bring coaching to schools, working with teenagers for an entire year, during the classes, with weekly sessions of 1h30m. 

During the  coaching sessions we will talk about  self-knowledge, self-esteem and  other emotions such: fear, blame, anger, leadership and nonviolent communication. The teen will learn how to deal with their emotions and life challenges, to find their own solutions and act.

The benefits of coaching in schools have been proven in different countries such Brazil, EUA and England, but in Portugal this is a “first time”/ innovative project. It’s our belief that we will improve our education system and teenagers life. Below some of the direct benefits:

#1. Increase of self-esteem, self-knowledge and other self;

#2. Improvement of the cognitive behavior;

#3. Improve the ability to work in teams;

# 4. Increase resilience;

# 5. Improve internal and external communication;

#6. Improving educational outcomes;

#7. Improving social skills;

# 8. Social inclusion of young people;

# 9. Reduction of aggressive behavior: bullying, self-mutilation, among others.

# 10. Reduction of pathological behaviors: depression, anxiety, obesity, addictions (drugs and alcohol), among others.

# 11. Increase the employment data;

We have already establish a partnership with 2 schools in order to develop our project and measure the impact. Our intention is to carry the coaching to all Portuguese schools.

Since schools don’t have budget to support us, we need your help to develop it.

Finally, the project is being supported by IES – Social Business School ((http://www.ies-sbs.org/).

About the author

Sara Janota and Raquel Barreto are both coaches with international certification.

Raquel Barreto has a degree in Environment engineering and a post graduate in Health and safety at work. In 2012 she change her professional life and attended several courses in personal development area such as mindfullness, Non Violent communication (Marshal Rosenberg methodology), Design Thinking, social business, Coaching certification and Master coaching Certification. Since 2014 she work with students of all age, in peer group and individual.

Sara Janota has a degree in IT Management and in Business management. Since 1997 she is a Computer Specialist at the University of Évora. From 2007 until 2014 she was Director of the supervision of Social Services at the University of Évora. In 2015, she was certified in coaching, working as a coach since there. Sara has developed several business projects, two of them were Vivafit franchising centers.

Budget and due dates

 This project has a year school duration, aims to test and evaluate the model developed and study the impact on the development of teenagers in school context. After the implementation and evaluation of the initial sample (4-6 classes), it will be possible to use funding programs for social entrepreneurship.

The actual costs of the project are higher than the 5,000€, over 35 weeks, with a minimum of 4 classes (about 120 teenagers).

It is estimated an expenditure of 1,000€ materials (cardboard, balloons, photocopies, mirrors, markers, and others.); 1,000€ on fuel for travel between schools and 2,000€ for symbolic payment of coaching sessions (more than 200 hours of coaching).

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