TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Sofia Chorna (Chernaia)
“ABC” is a uniquely designed training aimed at improving social inclusion and bringing change to local communities through the development of creativity fluency, social competences in theatre and improvisation, collaboration and creation of new projects.
The first step for a change, improvement or innovation is always creativity, creative ideas and thoughts. We become creative when we are in need, and right now European society is in need of inclusive activities and methods for working with different groups of people due to the drastic changes in demographics, increased migration and population transition.
Therefore, our goal was to define and share the peculiarities of youth work in the participating countries, to design follow-up local projects aimed at improving social inclusion and community development through combination of NFE activities that will involve creative thinking tools and problem-solving methods along with improvisation theatre and games.
The participants' profile of the TC:
• 18+ years old youth/social workers/leaders/NGO key staff;
• responsible, motivated and open to the new experience and learning opportunities;
• open-minded and flexible towards new knowledge, viewpoints and perspectives;
• with knowledge and experience in working with NFL programs (desirable, but not mandatory);
• ready to contribute to the project implementation: share relevant knowledge and experience, organize a workshop, lead a session, etc.;
• ready to implement the project results in further work;
• with good command of English.
The training involved 39 participants from 11 countries: Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine.
For 7 days, 39 youth workers deeply dived into the topic, playing, discovering and assimilating our working methods suitable for small and large groups. The goal of this activity was to boost youth workers' creativity, develop the competences and skills of creative thinking and problem-solving, to equip youth workers with relevant methods and tools in order to create and design follow-up local projects aimed at improving social inclusion and community development in participating countries. The learning by doing approach ensuresd many interactive activities, such as role-plays, simulations, improvisation theatre techniques and sharing best practices. We had long debrief sessions on all the elements of each method, ensuring a detailed understanding for all participants.
During the training, we:
• examined the applicability of creative methods and tools in social work dimension;
• discovered, how the creative methods and tools can be used for the aims of social inclusion;
• defined and examined the peculiarities of youth/social work in our countries;
• as an outcome, elaborated and designed follow-up local projects aimed for social inclusion of various social groups at risk of exclusion, creation of new and alternative participation opportunities and, therefore, community development. The generation of projects ideas was boosted by creativity fluency development and based on the knowledge and experience, gained during the project. From the ideas, we proceeded to planning, scheduling, defining the needs, aims, objectives, target groups, appropriate tools, needed resources, timeframes of realization, expected outcomes – as a result, we got drafts of the local follow-up projects.
Moreover, the participants and partner organizations got methods and tools to boost and develop creative thinking, which later on they will be able to use in their follow-up activities.
Finally, the training had a significant impact on the personal and professional development of the participants themselves.
The developed local projects can be overviewed here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rm6z7cL2XLZPpUTuBHAp4GyjKsvyFC-3?usp=sharing
I was one of the full time Trainers responsible for the content.