TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Milcho Duli
In the context of high unemployment rate among young people in Europe and especially in the context of still existing Roma discrimination, the project consortium felt the need to address those important issues and support youth workers and young people in Europe and beyond to acquire more professional skills and competences while gaining valuable experience in a multi-cultural environment. For the purposes to meet the need of our society and especially the need of the young Roma people, a specialized International Training Course has been developed and is proposed as to support young people's personal and professional growth, while focusing on enhancing their entrepreneurship skills.
The main goals of the project:
- Contribute to decrease the number of unemployed Roma people
- Stimulating of the creativity and entrepreneurship
- Networking with other organizations working on the same problem
Specific objectives:
- To network with other organizations working with Roma issue
- To provide 9 days of training course that covers:
awareness about different countries, cultures, traditions and policies and socio-economic issues
- Transferring the knowledge and promoting the Erasmus+ Programme among a large number of young people from the local communities of 10 different countries (both EU and non-EU) The following will be used as non-formal methods of learning: workshops, brainstorming, facilitated discussions, problem solving initiatives, guided visualizations, creative writing exercises and simulations, then individual, team work and group tasks, evaluation questionnaire and learning points,
practical activities, exchange of knowledge and
experience, and mixture of outdoor activities and study visits.
The target group of the project were youth workers working with Roma people but also young volunteers and leaders which wanted to gain skills on those issues. The countries involved in the project were: Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Jordan, Spain, Greece, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Albania and Lithuania.
The working methods were based on non-formal learning and group work. This includes team organization, practical presentation, discussions, group work, data collecting and summarizing. The workshops were filled with active dialogs, games and various methods, all in order to get to know the richness the cultures. The non-formal education workshop have covered the topics of prejudices and stereotypes, inter cultural learning and others.
During the training we fulfilled all main objectives in the project. The youth workers were sharing tools and methods how to work with Roma people in every country and we had also sharing from participants with Roma background. The organization participating and the young leaders gain many skills and competences how to work in the Roma community especially with the youngsters.
I was a member of the training team, and I worked with my colleague co-trainer and with the project coordinator to design the whole programme. As a full time trainer I also worked on the manual after the project activity and all other planned activities before and after the TC.