TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Rodrigo de Melo e Castro
The training course “Youth takes the floor” aims to allow youth leaders, youth workers and local authorities officers to work together developing their competences to create spaces where youth can work with local municipalities authorities in the development of local youth policies and strategies for the development of their communities.
The objectives:
1.Create a space for sharing and dialogue among
youth organisations (youth leaders / workers) and local authorities? officers (staff responsible for youth & youth workers).
2.Allow the space for the participants to better
understand the role of young people in the
development and sustainability of our democracies (structures & processes).
3.Promote a better understanding of the happening in both sides of the Mediterranean and the roles and impacts of youth in such processes.
4.Reflect about key concepts (such as advocacy,
policy making, partnership, participative and
representative democracy) of youth participation
in decision making processes.
5.Identify different instruments and structures of
and for youth participation in decision making processes being used in both sides of the Mediterranean in our partners? countries, and debate about their potential and challenges.
6.Develop competences (skills, knowledge and
attitudes) in creating conditions for youth
participation, in fostering partnerships and the
establishment of co-management structures and
instruments at local and regional level.
7.Support the development of strategies and action plans for fostering youth participation processes and the development of structures and instruments of structured dialogue and co-management at local and regional level.
8.Introduce the European Charter on the
participation of young people in local and regional life and their implications to mainstream youth participation in decision making process and youth policies development.
During 6 days 32 youth leaders / workers and
municipality officers responsible for youth coming from 23 different countries of Europe, North Africa & Middle East worked together on theme of increasing the quality of youth participation in decision making and policy development attending the "Youth Takes the Floor: A training Course on how to increase youth participation in decision making".
The presence of experienced trainers and experts during the programme will definitely contributed to create a productive and efficient working environment to enable us to take the best out of our working days.
The programme was based on non-formal education methodology aiming to ensure the active participation of all individuals involved. The methodology of this training course was based on non-formal education. There was a balance between working groups? discussions and plenary moments. The input from invited experts, sharing of best practices, workshops during the conference and visits to local organizations / entities were also an added value to the programme in a way that gave more thoughts for discussion.
The course was designed as an open learning
process based on experience & exchange to allow for the maximum involvement of the group while valuing every single participant using active participatory, co-operative & experiential learning methods. The participants' practice stage was seen as both a tool for learning & also as a concrete initiative to contribute for improving the participation opportunities & the quality & outreach of youth work at local level. The programme elements were composed by
different sessions where we could share our
countries realities in terms of youth participation; to develop our skills & knowledge on concepts & approaches such as building participatory structures & instruments; to learn on advocacy tools to be able to have youth policies closer to youth reality; to learn about how different instruments can be used to engaged youth in decision-making & also about legal instruments such as the European Charter on the Participation of young people in local and regional life and the Charter Education for Democratic citizenship and Human right Education.
Besides the development of the participants knowledge and experience on the theme. Participants have developed 23 action plans
to implement in their local realities to bring the
course experience. Many of this plans were
focusing on restructuring and/or including new
approaches on existing youth councils, other
focused on creating new ones, while others where quite diversed but had a focus of promoting youth participation in the local municipalities decision making processes.
Website link: http://ytf-nov13.tumblr.com/
Full time trainer and co-responsible for the training curriculum.