TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Laura Alciauskaite
The main aim of this study session was to improve understanding among young people with disabilities about international human rights instruments through the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (hereinafter - SDGs), and to empower young people to take a step forward and create change. With this study session, we also aimed to show different answers to the questions and problems we face nowadays, as well as to explain how these issues are related to each other. Another aim of this study session was to encourage, through personal experiences, new leaders in the field of not only disability, but in the field of human rights in general.
Other aims of the activity were:
- Improve understanding of Human Rights (hereinafter - HR), especially focusing on the rights of persons with disabilities and UNCRPD;
- To learn more about SDGs, their importance in everyday life;
- Encourage the participants to become the active changemakers and act as multipliers by sharing their new knowledge and skills with their peers;
- Introduce participants to different tools and instruments available, including the ones created by the Council of Europe, for Human Rights Education and advocacy;
- Understanding the framework of experiences of intersections between SDGs and disability;
- Making participants become more aware and familiar with the concepts of inclusion and disability, as well as the social model of disability;
- Enhancing cooperation and leadership between young people coming from different cultural backgrounds and countries;
- Finding out from participants which methods and tools they could take to their local communities in order to promote inclusive activities.
TRAINERS:
The members of the trainers team have been the following:
Goksel Ucak (Turkey)
Elena Ratoi (Moldova)
Laura Alčiauskaitė (Lithuania)
Peadar O’Dea (Ireland)
Robbie Stakelum (Belgium) - as educational advisor
PARTICIPANTS:
In total, we had 12 young participants with different types of disabilities coming from all over Europe, 7 of the participants brought their PAs with them. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19 restrictions we had to reduce the number of participants. In addition, quite strict Covid-19 related regulations caused extra barriers to travel and/or to bring PAs due to higher risk related to their disabilities, therefore some invited participants were not able to come to Strasbourg.
In those six days we used a lot of methods based on the principles of the non-formal education, including:
- Name games & getting to know each other
- Teambuilding
- Working in small groups
- Peer learning
- Group discussions
- Creating advocacy campaings
- Brainstorming
- Planning local actions
- Mapping realities
- Learning by doing (i.e., improving your public speaking skills)
- Reflection in small groups
Most of the participants agreed that the whole study session was well-structured and the competences they developed during the week were valuable and will be very helpful in the future. The participants liked the sessions about human rights education, project management cycle and EYF informative sessions the most. They thought that all input about the SDGs and how they are related to human rights was very useful and helped them find supplementary key points on what can be done in their future projects and follow-up actions. The youngsters were positive about the sessions that were based around how to implement their ideas and projects in their local communities, the management, networking and funding opportunities - they found these sessions very useful and informative. In addition to that, they came up with a lot of ideas by exchanging their lived experiences and cultural backgrounds with each other and additionally by sharing their local actions and support networks. All those were good experiences and examples for others to learn and observe how similar problems could be solved and more positive resolutions could be implemented in each of the participants' respective countries. They also found sessions on leadership and public speaking sessions useful and important, so that these competencies would lead them to become active citizens in their own communities.
I was one of the fivw trainers, involved in all steps of the trainings, including:
- Preparation for the activity
- Working in the international team of trainers
- Collaborating with the Youth Department of the Council of Europe
- Preparing the programme, picking the non-formal education methods and writing the session outlines for this study session
- Co-facilitating the sessions during the activity with fellow trainers
- Ensuring accessibility and inclusion measures during the activity
- Implementing the evaluation activities
- Facilitating the reflection groups
- Writing the final report.