TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Marta Skorczynska
This was a second part of the “Be Your Best Friend" project. This course - Do It Yourself, aimed at collecting the experience from the first training course and transforming it into easy practices which could be shared with other youth workers outside of the project. It was an idea laboratory. Participants in smaller groups lead a 2 hour workshop session for the rest of the group, in order to bring more attention to the youth workers' self care as an important area to develop professional competences in the field. Participants shared how they take care of the body, voice, feelings and their needs. Those elements were taken as crucial for mental and physical well-being of a person professionally (also as a volunteer) exposed to intensive relations with other people.
Participants: youth workers, trainers,
facilitators, educators, teachers, youth leaders from the UK, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Poland, and Estonia.
Trainers/ facilitators: 3 main trainers came from the partner organisations: Drama Way (Poland), Catalyst
for Growth (UK), and Dinámica (Spain).
NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION, as developed by M. B. Rosenberg, in its core puts the values of honesty, empathy and connection between people. It also refers to the connection with oneself and self-empathy as a practice that supports nonviolent actions directed to the outside world. This practice involves recognising judgments about oneself, blaming of oneself and anger towards oneself, as well as connecting to the feelings and needs, understanding how a person tends to meet the
recognised needs, looking for more successful and satisfying strategies by making requests to oneself. It resembles learning a new language, with a vocabulary we might not be used to or even aware of. Those new strategies we will try to ground in body based activities. Therefore we will focus on the following aspects. The VOICE is one of our main tools as youth workers, trainers or teachers. It can help us to hold learners' or team’s attention and to manage supportive and focused learning or working environments.The ability to use the voice in a healthy and efficient way is important for everyone that is leading a group or the learning processes of other people. Through the project, participants will learn
different breathing and voice techniques that would enable them to master their voice better: it includes Kristin Linklater, Roy Hart and Alexander Technique. Participants will have a chance to experience these techniques and the impact in the self-awareness and self-care that can be achieved with their help. More efficient and healthier use of their voice will help
educators to create easier a productive, focused and supportive learning environment for the learners and for themselves. SOMATIC WORK will be present through invitations and approaches coming from Anna Halprin, Gabrielle Roth and Bonnie Branbridge Choen works, practice and investigation. The body and the physical experience is considered in a complex way; where feelings, thoughts, knowledge and actions are all interconnected by a somatic net. Conscious movement , guided imaginary, breathing, experiential anatomy (dialogue between scientific maps and pure
experience), breathing and expression through integrated arts, will be pathways to identify and re-educate movement patterns (thinking, relationship and action patterns). Finally, there will be APPLIED DRAMA activities introduced as a complementary method, building upon the previous ones and adding a new dimension. Those activities lead to developing awareness and changes in understanding. This happens through reflection over what has been acted with the help of the body, what has been expressed outside and felt inside. Through this analysis, we practice awareness of our behaviour and interaction with others. NATURE THERAPY. It is an approach where nature is seen as a place rich in resources, where we can regenerate our human body and mind, and by observing how nature functions understand the natural process inside of us, which supports self-empathy. Outdoor activities or informal time will be supporting the moments of longer digestion and reflection.
Improved quality of work practices, motivation and satisfaction from work of 27 youth leaders, facilitators, youth workers involved professionally with the partner organizations.
We are creating also a booklet with graphic representations of some of the techniques and methods, with instructions, which could be used also by other youth workers as self-care practices.
Trainer, reposible for creating, implementing and eavaluating the training program.