TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Makbule Temel
This event was the second Congress ever in the history of the Alliance network, happening exactly 10 years after the very first one in 2014. In 2019, there was only a smaller meeting called "Congressino" to check the progress. The main goal of this 2024 Congress was to evaluate what the network achieved in the last years and to write the new strategic plan for the next 10 years. International volunteering organizations face many new political, social, and economic challenges today. The event addressed the urgent need to clearly define our common values, vision, mission, and identity. This directly fit the goals of the member organizations because it gave them a clear guide on how to run better local volunteering projects, how to work together across borders, and how to build stronger international working groups to share experiences.
The target group consisted of around 90 experienced youth workers, coordinators, and directors who work daily in international volunteering organizations within the Alliance network. The group was deeply international and came from all over the world. There were representatives from many European countries, but also global partners from countries outside Europe, like Mexico, Palestine, Nepal and Armenia. All these people are adult professionals who manage workcamps and youth projects in their own local realities. This made the Congress a truly worldwide platform where people with very different realities could meet, share their local experiences, and plan the global future of the network together.
We designed and delivered the whole 3-day Congress using only non-formal education methods, making sure it was active and collaborative. Because we had a very large group of around 90 adults, we used creative methods where everyone could speak and share their experiences. We divided the participants into small working groups and reflection groups to look deeply into the main topics and brainstorm together. To make the learning process fun and engaging, we created our own interactive game formats. For example, we designed a special educational escape room that helped the participants solve challenges together and think about our network's structure. We also used digital tools like Mentimeter in the big plenary sessions to get fast, live feedback from the whole room. All these methods focused on peer-to-peer exchange and practical teamwork, so that nobody was just sitting and listening, but everyone was actively building the new strategy.
The success of the Congress was clearly visible through the high energy and immediate actions of the participants. Instead of just creating a document, our sessions brought a wave of new motivation and a clear, shared vision for the network. The clearest proof of success was that during the Congress itself, new international working groups were formed by the participants on their own initiative. They immediately started working together to tackle the problems we identified in the workshops and to find global solutions for improving the network. These newly formed working groups and their action plans were formally presented to the General Assembly right after the Congress and were officially approved. The whole process, the workshop results, and the official resolutions are fully documented and published as official strategic papers on the main platform of the Alliance network (alliance-network.eu).
I worked full-time as one of the three main facilitators during the whole duration of the 3-day event. Together as an international team of three women, we co-designed the entire day-by-day schedule, the flow of the topics, and all the non-formal learning methods. My role was highly active and present on the floor every single day, making it a full-time training responsibility. I took responsibility for leading the big plenary sessions, managing the communication and energy of around 90 adult professionals, and guiding the difficult discussions around our vision and identity. We split the sessions equally among our team, but we were always there to support each other. It was my responsibility to make sure that even with such a very large and globally diverse group, the sessions stayed organized, creative, and delivered the concrete ideas needed for the network's next steps.
Working with Makbule as our trainer and facilitator was a truly inspiring experience. Throughout the program, she created a learning environment that was not only engaging and interactive, but also made every participant feel heard, included, and motivated to contribute. Her ability to combine creative methods with clear structure and meaningful reflection turned the learning process into something both enjoyable and impactful. Beyond strong facilitation skills, they brought positive energy, empathy, and professionalism to the whole experience. I can confidently recommend her as an outstanding trainer and facilitator, and I would be very happy to work with her again in the future.