TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Milena (Lazic) Nikolic
The aim was to build competencies of various practitioners involved in adult education in order to enable them to develop tailored volunteering programs aimed at reducing illiteracy rates in communities across Europe.
Furthermore, the aim was to bring together two fields - literacy programs and volunteering programs - in order to create a snowball effect, meaning to teach literacy workers how to work in a systematic way with volunteers in literacy programs, in order to increase the range, quality and impact of these programs. Involving volunteers in literacy programs exponentially increases the capacity of the staff working with this target group.
Topics addressed were Volunteerism, Volunteers Management, Illiteracy, Possible ways for developing volunteers programs for illiteracy issues, Creating Tools and Educational Approaches.
12 volunteer managers and leaders coming from Romania, France, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, UK, Spain.
Team of Trainers
Corina Pintea - Romania
Milena (Lazic) Nikolic – Serbia
The methodology used is specific to non‐formal education and learning, both individual and group methods, taking into consideration participants’ learning needs with a creative approach, meaning methods specific to non-formal education and learning, both individual and group methods, taking into consideration participants’ learning needs.
Participants had:
-Identified the most suitable learning experiences tailored to address the issue of illiteracy in Europe,
-Created drafts for volunteering programs, tailored for their literacy services, which they can easily put into practice in local realities,
-Been introduced to a volunteer management model with 9 steps, developed and implemented by Pro Vobis for over 10 years,
-Developed specific competencies and soft skills (empathy, assertivity, active listening, etc.), in order to enable them to work closer and more efficiently with illiterate beneficiaries,
-Comprehended illiteracy as multisystem problem which involves low self-esteem and adaptation problems in the social and work field in order to approach not only illiteracy itself, but also related problems,
-Discussed the European dimension of the illiteracy phenomenon and experiences regarding pedagogical methods, successful approaches, challenges etc. in the field.
I had a role of a trainer, meaning that I was responsible for design, implementation and evaluation of the training program. The training program was reviewed and evaluated every day and adjusted according to the learning needs of participants.