In the past months I have learnt many new things – that there are different drills for walls, wood and metal, how to handcuff a person on 100 different ways (mainly sexually), how to change the code of the locker and open cupboards, a lot of new Spanish words, that there are things impossible (like bind to metal drawers together with a very small locker) and many more. Seriously!
All of this was needed to prepare the ESCAPE Room. For those who doesn’t know yet, escape room is a real life game, where you lock a group of usually 2-6 people in the thematic room, and they have 1 hours to escape by solving the series of puzzles and quests. The types of puzzles are different – there are usually a lot of lockers to open, things to find that are hidden in unusual places, sometimes some logical thinking is helpful. Each room has its specific theme and adequate decoration and props. For the one in Lorca we have selected the theme of the TV show ¨Prison Break¨.
Let´s go back to the most essential for the youth workers question ¨WHY¨? Half of the year ago a college of mine came to the office and said that there is this kind of cool freaky thing (and let´s be honest escape room is getting more and more popular but still it´s a bit freaky) that is called escape room and we should do one. The obvious reaction was WHY NOT 🙂 As the ¨normal¨ youth workers who always have tons of projects to write and coordinate, reports to do and not forgetting about the finances, if comes the opportunity to do something really cool, fun, unusual and creative you need to do it. It is this kind of inner feeling that says YES before thinking about it.
We though that Escape room can be actually a great way to bring young people on board and involve them into different activities. Firstly because we just started to run a youth center and this might be a great way to bring there young people and make them feel like at home, like the place is theirs and they can use it as much as they want. Secondly, I need to use the magic word FIGHTING YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT, we would like to get NEETS out of their homes and comfort zones and offer them some things to do. And here I use the unemployment word not because it is needed for the project writing, but it because really makes sense. I am not claiming that with the escape room we will solve the problem of youth unemployment, but after several meeting of the Youth Guarantee in Lorca, there was the conclusion that there is no way to really get to NEETs. So by offering to young people free time activity that is innovative, engage, and youth is motivate to participate, we can get to NEETs. And after the activity there is always time to chat, so we can see what are the real needs of them, recommend some programmes and invite to participate in other activities. As it was said ¨Small step for a men, giant leap for the mankind¨, and by these small activities we believe we can change something.
More when the room will actually start working:D
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