Developing methodology of Aikido as a tool for skills development

SkillAi project was aimed at helping young people with fewer opportunities develop their social, emotional, and physical skills in order to overcome both internal and external aggression. At the same time, youth workers developed an online manual for training young people in order to achieve these goals with the help of unique tools of the traditional martial and spiritual art of Aikido. This was achieved by networking and skill-sharing between 3 Aikido sports organizations from Hungary, The Netherlands, and Slovenia. Youth workers and Aikido teachers who already worked in the field of child education through sports have met on 5international meetings spread out throughout the duration of the project. Four of these meetings were held on sites in countries participating in the project and one meeting was held online, due to the travel restrictions at the time of Covid-19 pandemic.All organizations organized special workshops which included young people with fewer opportunities and where youth workers developed their curriculum. These workshops were then shared with partners and further developed for the final implementation in the online manual.Manual was developed as a combination of video presentations and detailed descriptions of the workshops, which were divided into categories of physical development, awareness, coping with confrontation, self-esteem, aikido energy principles, breathing, body-language posture, group interaction, and firmness through aikido’s immovable principle. This manual was presented on the web page www.skillai.eu, which became an open platform for further work on the topic of youth inclusion.