Lifebook for Youth – Biographic Group Work

Children and young people with a painful and difficult past are often ashamed for their history and their family of origin. The deep-seated pain and the shame affect their self-esteem and make it additionally harder for them to develop into a healthy, strong and self-determined personality.

Our main concern with the Lifebook is to make these children aware of all their positive aspects and characteristics, nice events and good encounters with people in their lives, and to let them feel them as their own forces and resources. It should give them a new and expanded view of their history, from which they can draw strength and confidence for their future path.

The process and the outcome of the first projects with children have been overwhelming. The children were enthusiastic and seriously involved, so that not even a swimming trip to the sea, could lure them away from their Lifebook.

The children expressed enormous gratitude for the opportunity to talk about their lives in a protected environment. Although the Lifebook has an exclusive focus on positive aspects many painful memories were also expressed. The experience that one doesn’t have to deal alone with oppressive elements of one’s past, being able to express them and the feeling of being supported gave the children an inner strength. We could actually see how they gained rapidly in size and carried their Lifebook around with pride and radiation at the end of our work. That’s why we think our Lifebook is worth sharing during an interactive workshop in Tel Aviv! Experience it yourself!

Lifebook for Youth is working in Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Albania, Croatia, The Netherlands, South Africa and there are concrete plans to start working in Kenya, Lebanon and Poland in 2019.