ABSTRACT

Kallio, Tuomo and Silvennoinen, Mikko Me, as a Part of Community – Action-package for the use of Christian Youth Work in Vaalijala. 61 p., 6 appendices. Language: Finnish. Pieksämäki, Autumn 2009.

Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. Degree Programme in Social Services, Option in Christian Youth Work. Degree: Bachelor of Social Services

The objective of this thesis was to plan an action-package for the use of Christian Youth Work in Vaalijala. The action-package bases on experiential education, learning through experience –method and the Ten Commandments. The intention of the action package was to increase the self-esteem of the developmentally disabled youngsters who live in the Vaalijala rehabilitation centre.

The action-package consists of six occasions from which two are already kept. From these two occasions some feedback is given. This feedback gave the chance to fix the rest of the occasions, so that they would work as well as possible for the target group. The feedback was mostly commendable. The methods in the occasions were sufficiently versatile and concrete. They also didn´t strain youngsters too much. The theme of the other occasion was little too hard to understand for some of the youngsters. Shortly ex-pressed Vaalijala hopes for versatile, concrete and sufficiently simple methods for the following occasions.

The action-package is planned to be offered for different sectors of work with develop-mentally disabled people. Chances are quite good that the action-package will get users also outside of Vaalijala, at least the writers of this thesis are going to adopt the packa-ge, just as it is or lightly modified.

Keywords: developmental disability, experiential education, learning through experience –method, the Ten Commandments, church work with developmentally disabled people