Structuring non formal education: an opportunity for social inclusion

SHORTLY ABOUT THE PROJECT The project is a 7 days non-formal educational training programme in Italy, it includes 24 participants and aims to involve 8 countries. The main target groups are youth-workers, social workers, teachers, etc. who already work or expect to work in social inclusion area with non-formal educational approaches. The training project will be realized in the frame of EU programme “Youth in action”, 4.3. action. WHY IS IT NEEDED? Too often non-formal education is confused with spontaneous learning through experiences. This concept leads to educational programmes where the potential learning outcomes are not well planned and facilitated or where different experiences are proposed without supporting the reflection. Facilitators in NFE have the role to support learners in watching from different angles, think and reflect about the experience, figure out how to integrate the new learning in their lifes. In order to reach this goal, NFE has to be structured and needs a clear educational approach: it requires a need analyses, SMART objectives, a defined flow of a programme, a safe environment, a step by step activities coherent with the main aims and the specific objectives, a variety of methodologies and methods and a space for creativity! This is even more important while working in the social inclusion field, since the youngsters have often less chance to be involved in supported learning process. AIMS OF PROJECT - to promote an open and creative training environment for non-formal learning; - to improve participants’ competences in designing, facilitating and assessing structured activities in social inclusion area; - to support participants in exploring their educational approach; - to support the development of learning to learn as one of the pillar of any non formal programme - to make participants experience the designing of a learning plan based on non formal education - to promote the exchange of good practices and the network in the social area. TARGET GROUP: youth-workers, social workers, teachers, etc. Priority to people who are in daily life professionally working in youth work and social inclusion area. Participants needs to be able to communicate in ENGLISH!!! SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTIC OF THIS TRAINING COURSE: two days and half of the agenda will be co-created by the group. So there will be a concrete example of structuring a non formal education programme taking part directly to this process!