Confronto tra attori educativi. Il valore formativo dei focus group nel contesto del Cre-Grest / Oratorio Estivo

[Autom. eng. transl.] Among the experiences of youth ministry, that of Cre-Grest is significant and formative for many young people, adolescents and children of the Lombard dioceses. In this regard, Lombardy Diocese Oratories (Odielle, http://www.odielle.it/) plans the Oratorian summer which, through a theme, underlines the pastoral and educational value of the proposal. In this abstract we want to enhance what was experienced in the summer of 2022, when on the initiative of the dioceses involved it was decided to give voice to the educational actors of the different territories. With the aim of bringing out the pastoral opportunities of the Cre-Grest, of investigating the motivations that allow the implementation of the Cre-Grest today and in the future and of sharing the efforts and resources of a Cre-Grest, the latter were involved in various diocesan focus groups. The choice to favor this interpretative technique is linked to its ability to go in depth, thanks to the combination with the theoretical study of quantitative approaches and on the basis of the assumption according to which group interaction favors the emergence of original information from of the subjects involved. The various participating subjects, as priests, educators, parents, volunteers and coordinators, had the opportunity to share - guided by a facilitator - reflections, proposals and difficulties. What emerged as significant was the importance of giving voice and encouraging continuous discussion between social actors, as a mechanism that characterizes the focus group, and which made it possible to «clarify individual positions and compare them with those of others, according to a process of sharing and comparing, which leads to the definition and explication of subjective meanings up to the creation of new common areas of understanding" (Cataldi, 2009, 14). The members were therefore invited to implement the mental capacity to organize the pastoral meaning and therefore also the motivations and personal experience which, reworked, allowed them to then reflect on the present using compositional criteria that allow them to find themselves through the oral story more immediate (Amadini, Cadei, Malavasi, Simeone, 2022). Participation was significant, with 54 participants for 8 focus groups, and this method was recognized by the group as having the ability to "give the floor" and was also chosen for further comparative explorations.