TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Igor Spetic
The aim of this Training Course is to empower youth workers to work with young people on discovering the challenges, needs and opportunities in their communities and support them in taking innovative initiative(s).
The Training Course was created space for:
- sharing experiences, successes and failures in community building;
- connecting youth workers that (want to) empower youth;
- getting inspiration from young changemakers
- exploring the needs for community building;
- learning how to create the safe environment to empower young people.
The expectations of trainers were to have an as heterogeneous group of participants as possible both in terms of geography, age, gender and professional background. To have a group not too small and not too large as well as to form small groups easily the trainers expected to have 24 participants. From 109 applications the different NAs selected 34. Based on previous experiences the host NA counted with cancellations. A few days before the TC it seemed to have 24 participants, however there were 2 more cancellations just before kicking off the TC.
The group really met with the expectations of the trainers since it showed a wide variety in the following terms:
- geographical: from 13 countries
- gender: 13 female, 8 male and 1 other
- age ranges: from 19 to 50 years old; 5 from the participants were under 25 years old
- professional field: from youth organizations (like university youth association) through different kinds of NGOs (e.g. roman association, cancer society, Red Cross) to formal education with teacher participants,
- role in their organisation: volunteers, teachers, youth workers, project coordinators, project managers, CEO
- professional experience: from carrier starters to participants with long and wide experience in their professional field
- experience with Erasmus+: for some of the participants this TC was their first experience with Erasmus+, others already implemented numerous Erasmus+ projects and participated in different activities (e.g. youth exchanges, training, EVS, etc.) within the program.
Methods:
role game/simulation, Experiential learning: the simulated experience of the Debate, Peer learning, debriefing, brain storm / creativity game, Individuals work in the team, creative Workshop, SWOT ANALYSIS (personal strength, weakness, opportunity, threat), interactive dialog, drawing visualization, mental map, video clips.
The training aim was to empower youth workers to work with young people on discovering the challenges, needs and opportunities in their communities and support them in taking innovative initiative(s).
After evaluation, reflection and conducted analyses of evaluation, common conclusion of all trainers and participants is that training has successfully reached the foreseen objectives such as:
• sharing experiences, successes and failures in community building
• connecting youth workers that (want to) empower youth
• exploring the needs for community building
• learning how to create the safe environment to empower young people
Variety of participants helped a lot in achieving the results (from formal to non formal sector and individuals - freelancers). The trainers provided a variety of creative and innovative methods and tools that participants can use in their different context. Thanks to the trainers’ approach the learning environment was safe, respectful and supportive. The flow of the training was logical starting from group building, sharing stories, self-reflection, defining needs and challenges, creating ideas, project management, visiting local community projects, creative thinking to the personal action plan.
Different tools, methods and all handouts were shared and available in a google drive folder:
(https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cfKGgtbOGa4I_xNivEjwwRst-STEoG9j?fbclid=IwAR1d92W_1_gJxxd4bU5sMKu8pt6TadyHqbhoHvcTCoVNMF9iKHcEW-tTDBg)
The methods and activities of the training met the expectations of participants, namely adopting new methods, tools, changing experiences and networking.
One of the highlights of this training was visiting 4 local communities of civic sector and get an insight in their work.
In general the evaluation was very positive in all aspects (about the trainers, content, the learning environment), the results of the conducted survey showed that 99% would recommend this training to others.
TC Think Big start small was created during the Training of Trainers TOT2018. In the team, with other two trainers, I had the role in creation of the goals, outcomes, and training schedule. During the implementation of the training I had the role of the facilitator for the segments related with the local community activities and self-evaluation, reflection, motivation, and mentoring of the training participants.
In the evaluation phase, together with the trainers, I was participating in evaluation of the achieved outcomes and finding new ways and ideas to further develop the training.