TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Ana Jovanovic
Training was aiming to make a new line of international youth workers. Participants of the training were young people interested in youth work that already had some experience in it, but they wanted to improve their knowledge and gain new ideas for future projects. The organization itself is dealing with youth and it is leaded from the side of youth workers that engaged trainers in which they trust and in which they have already worked with.
Project has gathered 25 young people from: Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary, Denmark, Lithuania, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. Participants were up to 30 years old, actively involved in different NGOs back home. They were young youth workers, peer to peer educators and facilitators of youth workshops.
The training itself involved many different, common used methods like: presentations, discussions, interactive lectures, games and audio-visual material. In the other hand. My personal approach was the organization of theater workshop and involvement of theater tools in youth work. We practiced stage performance, body positioning, mimics and diction with participants. They had to organize their own theater play on a topic of youth work where they were using some of the basic theater tools they used. Screaming out loud, a lot of touching each other noses and breaking of the personal bubbles was more than a surprise for some of them, but they coped with this role quite well in the end. The aim of the workshop was to show different approaches in work with young people and replacing the old -fashioned stiff way of communication with them.
The training managed to share many new creative tools in youth work where participants refreshed their knowledge, shared experience and managed to understand how to improve their youth work. The last part of the training was devoted to new projects that participants should prepare and implement in their future. Before the final report was finished, there were 3 new applied projects under Youth in Action program.
http://www.leaders.cre-act-ive.com/
I was involved in training preparation on two meetings before the session started. We have set down the line of activities and concept that we will use during those 9 days and split the responsibilities among our team. My part was to implement workshops about Youth in Action project, Intercultural learning, Communication and theater tools. I was also responsible for one part of evening activities like welcome evening, role play game and intercultural evening. Considering that training involved 3 trainers, we equally split activities in preparation and implementation phase.