SALTO Inclusion 2002

SALTO TC Inclusion & Group Initiatives

After consultation with the network of National Agencies and the European Commission, SALTO-Belgium organised a Training Course on Inclusion and Group Initiatives (or How to use Group Initiatives as a tool in working with young people with less opportunities). It was felt that Group Initiatives (Action 3 of the YOUTH programme) would be a very suitable tool in the work with young people in difficulty because the Group Initiatives are local projects for and by the young people.

The training course on Inclusion & Group Initiatives aimed to give youth workers coaching skills necessary for motivating and assisting a group of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds when embarking on a Group Initiative - however without taking over! - as Action 3 should be the initiative by and for the young persons.

44 youth workers from over 20 different countries participated in this training course. The course definitely increased the participants' knowledge of the YOUTH programme and Action 3 more in particular, it contributed as well to the project and people's management skills needed to coach a group embarking on a Group Initiative. The documentation of the course (report) took the format of a Toolbox, from which other youth workers or National Agencies can easily use methods, checklists or background texts for their own inclusion & Group Initiative related activities. More information about the course here.

Inclusion Online

SALTO's Inclusion work should not stay limited to the 2 courses and to the 50 youth workers on them only. From the start of the SALTO-YOUTH.net website, SALTO-Belgium (Flanders) developed a whole series of subpages related to inclusion.

• SALTO Belgium (Flanders) developed an introduction page (www.salto-youth.net/inclusion/) to its work in the field of inclusion and directed interested surfers to available inclusion resources - either from SALTO or elsewhere on the net
• All information and documentation related to the SALTO training courses on Inclusion can be found on the SALTO website (www.salto-youth.net/tcinclusion/) - whether it is about past or future training opportunities
• SALTO is not the only one providing training on inclusion; therefore we started to promote training activities about Inclusion from other organisations via SALTO's European Training Calendar (www.salto-youth.net/traininginclusion/)
• In the frame of 'we should not re-invent the wheel', SALTO also started to search for existing websites and set up a linklist online at www.salto-youth.net/linksinclusion/ where you can find a user-friendly short description on what you can find on which Inclusion related website 

Inclusion Trainers

From SALTO's experience with its courses, it was felt to be a yearly challenge to find the most appropriate and experienced trainers for them. In a working group at Bridges for Training (2001), the idea was launched to create a central online database with trainers. This would not only be useful for SALTO's courses, but also for those of the National Agencies and other training organisers in Europe.

2002 was the year in which this idea grew into a concrete Trainers Online for Youth database. At different meetings and forums feedback was collected and integrated into the final result.

• More about the TOY database here.