Facilitating intercultural learning in work with youth groups

Intercultural learning or learning with and from the group in a learning mobility is often taken for granted, as “it will happen anyway”. While it is nice to have a piece of magic in the learning activities, we believe that an educator should master the magic tricks and use them wisely in order to steer the group to where he or she wants them to be. Group processes happen in youth exchanges, camps, training courses or seminars regardless of the preparation of facilitator. Though the “ability to utilise certain group processes for educative purposes is a great strength.” (Gailius et al., 2013) Therefore, with this training course we are willing to improve the strength of youth workers and youth leaders in understanding and utilizing intercultural group processes for educative purposes and to give them tools to get a grip on these rather intangible aspects and to show them to the broader community. AIM of the TC is to support and empower youth workers and youth leaders through developing competencies needed to facilitate learning process of intercultural groups of young people. OBJECTIVES: • Develop understanding of group processes and their effect on learning; • To improve professional competences of participants which will help them to facilitate activities with young people with learning oriented approach; • To improve participants’ competencies to plan, run and evaluate exercises on intercultural learning; • Develop understanding of importance of reflection in educational activities and provide participants with the competence of guiding reflection process of youngsters: designing reflection questions and running the process; • To improve participants’ competencies to adjust, adapt and create new methods based on non-formal education methodology that are in line with the current stage of the group dynamics; • To introduce focus groups as a tool for investigating intercultural learning process and its impact with young people; • To create space for future Erasmus+ projects development and ensuring the quality of the projects through developing common understanding of Youth project quality criteria: non-formal education, intercultural learning, and impact. Participant profile: - Directly working with young people – youth workers, youth leaders, cultural workers, and educators; - Having no or little experience learning on international level; - Able to participate in whole duration of the learning process; - Committed to do the follow-up activities in their organizations (implement workshops with groups, organize a focus group) - Committed to disseminate project results in their local realities at local (city, municipality) and institutional level (organization); - Coming from countries where partners are located; - Able to understand and express themselves in English.