TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Branimira Penic
The main goals we wanted to achieve within this training is to raise awareness of youth workers about the importance of human rights and human rights issues in youth work.
The main objectives of the “HERO” training course were to:
- Raise awareness of human rights issues in youth work and contribute to their protection;
- Exchange good practices in human rights-based youth work and solving human rights issues within youth work framework.
- Develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities of youth leaders and youth workers necessary to promote the learning of and learning for human rights.
By achieving these objectives, we wanted to increase knowledge and awareness about human rights of youth leaders and youth workers. Also, we wanted to empower youth workers and youth leaders in order to promote human rights among other young people. The most important skills that we wanted to enhance by this training was critical deliberation about their everyday practice and how the human rights framework is connected to youth work and sharing and transferring knowledge to others and learning from that process. Throughout this training we introduced different perspectives on the topic of human rights in order for participants to become active advocates of human rights in their local communities.
The participants in the training were active youth workers and youth leaders who, in their professional lives, dealt with the challenges of human rights violations and protection. All partner organizations had youth workers and youth leaders working in local communities who needed more knowledge, skills, and support in the field of human rights. The partner organizations worked with highly diverse groups of young people, covering a wide range of topics, but all dealt with human rights issues on a daily basis.
The training involved 15 countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Italy, Kosovo, Hungary, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, and Ukraine, with a total of 30 participants.
Different non-formal education methods were used during this training, including icebreakers, team-building activities, group work, treasure hunts, role plays and reflection activities.
Here is the description of non-formal method we used:
SESSION: Code of Conduct
Objectives: to raise awareness of importance of ethical approach in youth work, to raise
awareness about values in youth work.
Activity time: 110 minutes
Group size: 15+
Materials: · post-its chart papers markers
circle of responsibility handout example of code of conduct
Part I (30'):
Make up to six groups. Give each person in a group 5 post-it papers. They should put 5 values they personally think are important in youth work (per example: confidentiality, respect, freedom of choice). There will be four rounds of discussion. Each round every participant should dismiss one value (that is the least important to him/her) until there is only one value left. After each dismissing, there is short discussion on why they’ve choose to dismiss that value. In the final round they discuss why they left that particular value up to the last round. If they have all 5 values different, they are ready for the next activity. If not, if they have same values, they should choose among “dismissed” ones in order to have 5 different values.
*Facilitator is writing down their values on large chart after they finish the activity. List of values is visible to all groups and they can use it in the next activities.
Part II (30'):
Give participants “Circle of responsibilities” handouts with four circles on it. They should put all the people, institutions, groups etc. that youth worker is responsible to or have an influence on. If a youth worker is more responsible towards something or has more influence on it, they should put it in the inner circle; if the youth worker is less responsible to or have influence on, the should put it in outside circle. After they fill in the handout, they will briefly present it to other groups. Other groups can add some proposals from each other if they find it useful.
Part III (30'):
Participants will get one example of Code of conduct (NAPOR*) within youth work. Their task is to draft their own Code of conduct based on the values they’ve chosen and circles of responsibilities they’ve made. Code of conduct should consist of title, short introduction and list of the core values with explanations.
Debriefing:
Was it easy to decide which value to dismiss?
What was the most challenging part of this activity?
Were your final values different or same?
Were there any surprises?
What do you think, do we have a lot of responsibilities?
And what about the influence?
How was the process of Code of conduct making?
Was it hard to explain values?
How can you transfer this to your field of work?
In this publication you can find the timetable: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HAuYAmndOQ0UXM8jJwWktzDqfhSvqxiy/view?usp=drive_link
The training empowered 15 partner organizations in human rights education, leading to new activities and trainings. Carpe Diem applied for an Erasmus+ grant (HERO2) and partnered on a Council of Europe training course. A new training management model was developed, improving implementation and support for partners. Two volunteers from Karlovac participated, raising awareness of Erasmus+ and human rights.
The training impacted at least 15 local communities, organizing 13 workshops and 2 advocacy campaigns, reaching 210 people. A manual on human rights education and a code of conduct were created for future use by youth workers and educators.
Info: https://carpediem.hr/portfolio/hero/
Publication: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HAuYAmndOQ0UXM8jJwWktzDqfhSvqxiy/view?usp=drive_link
I was in charge of preparatory tasks for participants, most of the logistics of the training, as well as preparing and implementing educational programs and coordinating dissemination activities.
I was the main trainer for this training in a team that consisted of 2 experienced trainers and 3 less experienced facilitators.