TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Heleri Alles
"We are on the move!" aimed to promote social inclusion, participation and active citizenship between young unemployed people using creative methods and new learning techniques. Project aimed at promoting participation in the construction of a tighter-knit, democratic, youth-oriented and united Europe, tackling the challenge of youth unemployment as an “opportunity” to develop active citizenship, enhancing tolerance, solidarity and mutual understanding and inclusion in the society. The project presented a set of activities that grants young people the chance to interact at the European level – and offered them the occasion to “work” together towards a common aim. Partners were from Norway, Turkey, Estonia, Italy, UK and Czech Rep. Intermezzo Ungdom was host and applicant organization. This training brought 28 youth together for common intersts.Training was lead by intercultural team of trainers from Estonia and Turkey with the support of Norwegian support team.
Objectives:
- Increase the participation of young unemployed people in the civic life in their community and the possibility to do the change.
- To support young people how to advocate and lobby their needs in the community
- Increase the role of young Europeans in representative democracy and promote the concept of active citizenship
- To contribute toward social inclusion of young unemployed people as marginalized group in the society
- To foster intercultural dialogue between the young people and share cultural diversity
The TC was an equitable platform where young people and other stakeholders together gathered information (with a bottom-up approach), debated, collected and shared individual and collective opinions, formulated their views and drafted them in the form of recommendations for future YIA projects promoting youth participation and inclusion of the young unemployed people. The partners of the project were youth organizations coming from 6 different countries – EU Member States and non EU and pre-accession countries - where youth unemployment, participation and inclusion of young unemployed people represented vivid issue on the local, national and European agenda.
Main event of the project was international training course, organized in the period of 10-17th April 2014 in Drammen, Norway.
Participants were from Norway, Turkey, Estonia, Italy, UK and Czech Republic. Intermezzo Ungdom was the host and applicant organization. This training brought together 28 youth leaders and unemployed youth.Training was lead by intercultural team of trainers from Estonia and Turkey with the support of Norwegian support team.
All methods used during the training course were non-formal, for example group works, role-plays, activities in town, learning buddies, world cafe etc. We tried to use various methods so everyone could find suitable way for learning and through good group building in beginning we ensured good working athmospare and active participation of people.
Our project was connected with priorities of youth in action programme. The main idea was to include youth with fewer opportunities and give them extra chances to be active in employment market and engage them in civil society. Most of the participants where unemployed youth themselves, so they learned first hand how to write CV and motivation letter, what kind of opportunities there are for gaining experience through volunteering and being part of NGO activities and how to empower other young people to be active in civil society. Our project also dealed with common European concerns such as uneployment and we talked a lot about common European values and rights, what people in EU have and how to use the opportunities offered by different EU programmes such as Erasmus+. We learned a lot about the realities in participating countries and through joint activities participants raised their knowledge of other cultures. We supported the cooperation between our participating organizations by creating a strong network and additionally started several new cooperation ideas to make joint projects in framework of Erasmus + programme.
We achieved following objectives
Objectives:
- Increase the participation of young unemployed people in the civic life in their community and the possibility to do the change.
- To support young people how to advocate and lobby their needs in the community
- Increase the role of young Europeans in representative democracy and promote the concept of active citizenship
- To contribute toward social inclusion of young unemployed people as marginalized group in the society
- To foster intercultural dialogue between the young people and share cultural diversity
Project was really relevant for participants needs as most of them were young people who were currently unemployed and had not much experience in woking in NGOs. After the project many of them have found a job, started volunteering or developed their own project idea. Most of them are active in sending organizations gaining valuable soft skills for future and at the same time supporting young people with fewer opportunities who have contacted their NGO. So this project was really relevant for participants and their needs.
After the project participants are aware of youth unemployment issues in different countries. They know what kind of soft skills are needed in job market and have experience how to present them to the future employer. They know how to gain experience and what kind of opportunities there are in EU – for working and volunteering. They know about European voluntary service and know the 3 key actions of Erasmus plus in the field of youth and how to use them. They have experienced developing a project idea, setting objectives and maping it down to application form. They know how to distinguish themselves from other and stand out, how to make a CV and motivation letter attractive. They also know how to include better youth with fewer opportunities to society and what are the challenges and possible solutions. Participants also imporved their skills in English, they can express themselves better and understand different accents. They learned some words also in the languages of other participants. They learned to work in intercultural team, to make cooperation and find solutions to problems. They learned to set themselves learning goals, and follow their own learning process counciously. They learned about the other cultures and cultural backgrounds and learned to express their own culture. They took initative in variuos workshops and initatiated their own project ideas. They used mathematics to calculate their travel costs and calculate Norweigian money to their own currency. They also used e-mail, skype, facebook and other means to communicate to organizers and spread the results about the project.
I was in charge of preparing the training course, implementation and evaluation of training course. I was a full time trainer for 7 days.