Armenian Progressive Youth NGO Info-Pack "Santa Barbara" | Page 2

Project Description
Santa Barbara – a daily soap opera popular in the Post Soviet territory. Famous for its
length (2137 episodes broadcasted during 10 years period) and the complexity of family
relationships between the main characters.

After several years of project experience and work with so-called difficult youngsters,
adolescents with challenging behavior Armenian Progressive Youth NGO (Armenia) and Föreningen
Framtidståget (Sweden) have recognized that often we speak about important world issues and
try to influence global problems, but do not notice, that our relationship with the world very
much depends on the relationship with our nearest people. Almost every psychological
counseling brings the patient to the understanding that the roots of most problems are hidden in
the very childhood and in the family. Participants can be interested or not interested in political
and social matters, but the question of relationship touches everybody.
The practice shows, that intimate, personal, family
relationship is one of the most challenging topics to
speak about (as participants are shy to overcome the
barrier to start to share their life experience), but also
one of the most attractive and intriguing ones (as it is
the most urgent issue for individuals – everyone has
his/her own life to live, consisting of relationship).
Thanks to participant reflections during and after
plenty of projects the trainers know, how curious are
people about this topic, how meaningful get
discussions, when participants are ready to open and
share their experience and how effective are the sessions, if the participants make their personal
conclusions and bring their decisions to life.