TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Tsvetina Zaharlieva
The training course main objectives were:
- to build capacity in European youth workers who can later on contribute to building the young digital leaders of the future;
- to improve the media literacy of the direct and indirect beneficiaries(young people, youth workers, parents and teachers,media, policy makers and other intererested stakeholders);
- to encourage the critical thinking of direct and indirect beneficiaries by teaching them how to recognize fake and biased news, online challenges and threats;
- to encourage effective online communication without hate speech by training participants how to respond to negative
comments, through counter narratives;
- to develope active digital citizenship by showcasing how online space can be used for positive online campaigns and causes;
- to present European initiatives such as "Safer Internet" and "Meet and Code", European Media Literacy Week and other
programs;
- to present and share useful digital tools for diversification and improvement of youth work;
- to promote intercultural dialogue, international cooperation and exchange of information and experience on the topic;
- to promote promoting cross-sector partnership and synergy between cultural education institutions and non-governmental organizations to achieve common causes;
The training course was for 30 participants from 9 Erasmus+ countries - Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Serbia, North Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Estonia and Lithuania.
We led the training with my Romanian colleague trainer Adrian Apostol from the "SAKURA" NGO who has over 30 years of experience in youth projects and non-formal education.
The training agenda included sessions:
- for media literacy and online challenges sharing from the ten partner countries;
- encouraging the participants' critical thinking - for recognizing fake and biased news, acquainting them with the phenomena "echo chambers" and "filter bubbles";
-discussion with local journalists about fake news;
- sessions to get acquainted with their own rights as online users and how to respect the rights of others tackling issues like cyber bullying, sexting, careless selfies offending others etc.;
- about major online challenges and how to respond to hate speech and negative online comments;
- promoting digital leadership and citizenship in which we will promote the use of the online space to initiate positive
campaigns in support of socially significant causes;
- about exchange of best practices from already implemented positive online campaigns in partner countries, which will
contribute to the exchange of experience and opportunities to multiply ideas already tested in other project countries.
- special mission in the town to acquaint the participants with the situation in Bulgaria and Karlovo on the project topics;
- presenting the European initiatives "Safer Internet", "Meet and Code", Safe Internet Day, Media Literacy Week and others;
- about useful European tools for personal and professional development such as Youthpass;
- for presenting useful digital tools to diversify and improve youth work - such as Zoom (as a method of communication
between partners and conducting training webinars), Trello (for mutual projectwork), Google Sites (for project site
development), and others;
-Kahoot evenings wher the participants test another useful digital tool for their work learning by having fun;
- about the Erasmus + program and planning future joint projects on important youth topics;
- about planning follow-up training sessions and campaigns in the partner communities in order to reach more young people
and interested youth workers/teachers with whom to build the young digital leaders of the future together.
After the training course the participants in the educational mobility:
- are more informed and prepared for the online challenges;
- have increased media literacy and critical thinking;
- are able to recognize fake and biased news and know how to train others to do so;
- have increased capacity, knowledge and skills on the topic both from the training itself and from the exchange of good
practices from partners and other participants;
- are more familiar with European programs and initiatives on the project topic such as "Safer Internet", "Meet and Code",
European Media Literacy Week, in which we encouraged them to participate;
- have acquired knowledge of useful digital tools for diversifying their youth worl and reaching more young people from isolated areas through online training and communication opportunities;
- are motivated to continue to participate in such training mobility programs in order to acquire new knowledge, skills and competences;
- have improved foreign language skills both in English as the project working language and in other foreign languages they
will practice during the trainingcourse with the other participants;
- improved their intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding;
-are prepared to share all the knowledge acquired during the project with their local target groups, thus contributing to building the young digital leaders of teh future;
I was the main trainer in this TC cooperating with my Romanian colleague Adrian Apostol. We designed together an agenda full of participatory non-formal education methods which helped us reach the project objectives.