Step In! : Help Youngsters Come out of Their Shell and Step into Action

Theme: Self-initiative, Empowerment, Active Participation / Citizenship Background: Do you find it challenging to activate young people to develop their own projects? Are you looking for effective approaches how to make them assume responsibility and participate in at least one full project cycle in your organisation? Are you trying to deal with the changing world and specific reality of youngsters? Youth organisations all around Europe and their teams have always tried to find the best ways to attract, motivate and activate young people, so that they can turn them into active participants in the life of the organisation as well as in their own lives. Still there are many challenges that youth leaders have to deal with in order to realize youth activation. If you can recognise the above-described reality as part of your life, this course is for you. Let’s try to find out together how to make it “cool” for youngsters to be active; how to “speak their language” so that we can show them the benefit of being active and match their interests with the needs of our organisations. Aim: Help leaders in youth organisations to develop skills for empowering youngsters to step into action. Objectives: ● Reflecting on the importance of the needs of young people in motivating them; ● Exploring different ways of providing a “learning environment” where young people can try, make mistakes, and handle with responsibility; ● Exchanging ideas, experiences and best practices in activating young people at personal, civic and social level; ● Developing the ability of young people to turn ideas into action in order to facilitate their sense of initiative and entrepreneurship and thus become more competitive in the job market. Target group: Leaders in youth organisations, project coordinators, those in charge with the management of volunteers and members that: ● Directly work with young people over 18; ● Have an active role in the project management where it is possible to actively involve young people; ● Look for new ideas, tools, methods and best practices to activate young people; ● Have sufficient English skills to follow this Training Course. Learning outcomes: By the end of this Training Course, the participants will be able to: ● Reflect on their individual needs, motivation, attitudes and behaviour in working with young people; ● Develop self-awareness on their contribution on the process of empowerment of young people; ● Have a better understanding of the elements and importance of a “learning environment”; ● Analyse the needs of young people they work with; ● Develop a need-based approach to provoke self-initiative and active attitude; ● Support young people to take responsibility for their personal and career development; ● Broaden their horizon via different ideas, tools, methods and best practices. (Note for NAs: This project is financed by TCP 2013)