Star of Europe - Online

Learn How to Make REAL Youth Exchanges!

Whatever you have heard about youth exchanges before or however you have organised them before, this training will teach you how to make youth exchanges like they are meant to be!

You will learn how to support young people to initiate and run their own projects. And you will understand, why youth exchanges should not be projects that adults plan for young people.

Focus on involvement and partnership

The original idea of a youth exchange is a long-term learning process for the groups of young people in participating countries. Young people are involved in a process, where they come up with an idea for a project, they choose the topic for it and design the activities for its programme. They run the activities directly themselves and plan dissemination activities for other young people and their peers.

Every step of the process is about learning - the more the young people participate, the more they learn.

In The Star of Europe, the youth exchange is dividided into steps - in the training you realise how your young people can take an active role on each step of the process. And how you can support them participating actively - in every participating group!

Digital material supporting your process

Have a look at the Star of Europe digital material on www.starofeurope.eu. The short videos highlight good working ways and propose exercises with the young people. You can share the material with your partners and follow the same ways of working.

The digital materials are used in the training. When you will return home, you have a good understanding on how to use them with your young people and your partners.

Aims and objectives

The aim of The Star of Europe is to get a comprehensive understanding of what a youth exchange project contains - from the idea, needs assessment of a project to the follow up activities. More specifically, the main objectives are:

• To become familiar with the whole logic of life cycle of a youth exchange project
• To increase the understanding of the value of full involvement of young people in youth exchanges
• To become aware of  learning opportunities of the young people within youth exchanges
•  To pay extra attention to the equal partnership and encourage partners to plan, prepare, implement and report the project together
•  To get acquainted with a Star of Europe digital platform as a tool for support of youth exchanges

Training for newcomers and experienced group leaders

It does not matter if you do not know what youth exchanges are, you will learn about them in this training.

You can also be experienced, but you have not involved young people in the planning and implementation of the projects before. In this training you can learn how.

To participate, you will have to be over 18 years old. You can be a professional or voluntary youth worker, or a peer leader. As long as you work directly with young people on regular basis. In the selection we prioritise applicants, who work regularly with young people and who apply all the learned ideas and methodologies directly into their work with the young.

Intensive, but rewarding

The training takes place online over 5 days. You will have two 3-hour sessions every morning and afternoon on Monday-Thursday. On Friday there is just a morning session.

You will have a 15 minute break in each of the blocs and a lunch break for one hour every day.