Partnerships for Participation

Aims & objectives

Both trainings were connected through large-scale global project on child participation in the decision-making of schools and local authorities developed by IFM during 2015, aiming to increase the quality and quantity of young people’s participation in the democratic life of ten communities in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America through building genuine and sustainable partnerships between children’s groups, schools and local authorities. The project included 10 EVS volunteers hosted in 10 different member organisations of IFM-SEI who lead the project locally.
The two training activities took place at the beginning and almost end of the project:
1) A volunteer meeting to prepare EVS and local volunteers for implementing the project locally.
Objective: make the link between the local and the international level and get to know the local projects.
2) A training course for children and young people. The training course brought together children of each local group and the EVS volunteers. The young people shared their experiences and ideas on youth participation, analysed the research results carried out after first training and developed new approaches to child participation. They were trained in order to train decision-makers on child participation and develop ideas on how to strengthen child participation also on the regional level.

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

1) Volunteer meeting of EVS volunteers and host organisations (January, Bolivia):
The volunteer group consists of 10 EVS volunteers and 10 local volunteers, working together in the local communities.
2) Training Course for children’s local groups representatives and EVS volunteers (July, Belgium)

The countries involved in the trainings were: Camerun, Indonesia, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Latvia, Germany, Finlandi, Spain and Belgium.

Training methods used & main activities

1) The meeting was based on nonformal education methodology and used particularly the experiences of participants.
2) The training course was based on nonformal education methodology, using interactive methods such as simulation games, world café discussions, peer reviewing project plans, drama etc.

Outcomes of the activity

One of the main outcomes of the project was a toolbox on participation:
https://www.salto-youth.net/downloads/toolbox_tool_download-file-1360/Partnerschips_for_Participation_English.pdf

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

I was hired as expert in child-participation and developed all training activities related to this part.
Moreover, since it was a very small training team (3 in first training and 2 in the second one), I also developed and delivered other parts of the training.

I worked on this training for 6 & 6 days as a full time trainer.