TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Silvia Turcu
The main goal of the project is to develop young people’s natural talents and abilities in order to improve their relation to the labour market.
Objectives:
- To increase the knowledge level of youth workers in topics like creativity and non-formal education.
- To create pro-active attitudes among youth workers towards exploring their creative potential in order to help young people increase chances in actively involving in the work field;
- To develop practical skills to youth workers or youth leaders in creating non-formal methods to use in their work;
- To stimulate the participants to act as “creativity agents” in their own organization and regions;
- To encourage participation and involvement of young people in creative processes;
- To introduce Erasmus plus programme, as a great provider of project opportunities.
The team included 2 trainers (from Romania and Spain), 2 members of the team (from Spain).
The training was dedicated to 20 youth workers from Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Poland Romania and Spain.
In the context of the project, the participants have experimented a high variety of methods and instruments as: The Village, Learning Styles, Lateral thinking, six thinking hats, Social Entrepreneurship, Economy of common good, Creative Writing which offered them the opportunity to enhance their creativity and deeply explore ways in which they can raise quality of their work by putting them into practice. In this manner, the first objective of the project was reached. In addition, participants were actively involved in each step of the program bringing their contribution in each session. They also have prepared their own workshops in which they have created and performed various non-formal and creativity methods.
Throughout the program, participants developed competences in the area of facilitation as working in teams, communicating meaningfully with others, understanding and facilitating individual and group learning processes, learning to learn or designing educational programs. The program sought to offer opportunity to have very practical sessions from which they can develop skills to use in their practice. For example, they had a practical workshop on Creative Writing with a professional writer in which they learned how to use their creative potential in creating stories. Participants also had the opportunity to visit a Social Business in the area where the course took place and thus could explore what Social Entrepreneurship means in practice, what are the challenges and how it can be best implemented. In this manner, the next two objectives of the project were reached.
I have been involved in writing the project application. Together with my colleague, I have developed the design of the program, implemented the learning activities during the training course, evaluated the training and writing the final report. I have also been involved in follow up activities maintaining communication with participants after the program.