TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Nerijus Kriauciunas
This seminar intended to create partner-building opportunities for volunteers and youth workers from organisations working with young people with physical or mental disabilities. Specific objectives of this activity were:
> To discover opportunities provided by Erasmus+: Youth in Action programme;
> To explore how youth exchange projects could be an educational tool for inclusion youth work;
> To provide opportunities to find partners for future projects.
23 participants from 10 European countries took part in this activity. They represented various organisations and institutions, which work with young people having disabilities. The years of experience working with young people ranged from 2 years to more than 25 years.
Most of the participants did not have previous experience of organising youth exchange projects within Erasmus+ Youth in Action programme. There were only 3 participants who previously organised youth exchange projects that involved young people with disabilities.
Taking into consideration the focus of this activity, the methodology was chosen to reach the objectives of this seminar.
Various group dynamic activities were used to facilitate the getting to know process and establish grounds for networking.
Erasmus+: Youth in Action opportunities were introduced by using the Actionbound mobile application (http://www.actionbound.com). This was an interactive way to introduce basic information and rules related to youth exchanges.
Three organisations who have previous experience of organising youth exchanges involving young people with fewer opportunities presented their projects and shared their good practices.
Organisation market was structured in few steps. First participants prepared posters of their organisations. There were 3 rounds to present and discover organisations clustered in groups.
During the seminar, special focus was made on the challenges and solutions for involving young people with disabilities into international mobility. The workshop was offered for participants to share experiences and ideas in mixed groups on specific aspects of inclusive youth work.
There were offered guided process to facilitate the partnership-building and project development. During 2 rounds, participants had opportunities to identify potential project ideas and partners, meet and discuss the concept of the project along these questions:
> Who? Profile of young people targeted.
> What for? Goals, benefits, needs.
> What about?
> How? Activities, methods.
The project development was concluded by making clear action plan of the first steps after the end of this seminar.
The participants of this seminar have developed several project concepts and presented them during the plenary session.
Here is the summary of anonymous comments provided by participants via online evaluation form
Strong sides of the seminar:
> Professional facilitators and good support as well as effective time planning.
> Good structure and balance between working and free time
> Adequate methodology for reaching seminar objectives
> Sufficient group size - not too big, but enough diverse
> Good open-minded group and positive atmosphere for communication
> Possibility for informal time and fun together with others.
Possible improvements
> 14 participants mentioned that they would appreciate more time for the seminar.
> 2 out of these 14 people suggested to add 1 more day, 2 people mentioned they wished to have more time for getting to know organisations and 4 people suggested that extending
seminar time would make more balances and less intensive.
> 2 people offered to include more project examples next time.
> 1 person mentioned that hotel could not respond well to the special dietary needs, which
became evident to the organisers already on the first day.
> 1 person mentioned that seminar description should highlight even more that it’s the event for
youth workers working with young people with disabilities.
> There was another suggestion by one person to have less ice-breaking activities, but some of
these also contradicted with opposite suggestions by others to have more ‘getting to know each other’ activities. Therefore, no strong conclusion could be made.
Quotation of one participant:
I am really very happy and looking forward to bringing our planned project to reality and it is good to see that all partners are into it. THANK YOU for this opportunity :)
Facilitator