TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Aiste Slajute
The main aim of this training course was to explore the concepts and benefits of visibility and dissemination strategies for European youth and community projects through well elaborated communication networks; and developing collaborative actions between participating organizations. In other words ‘Bump It Up!’ means formulating a communication strategy, making your work visible and sharing your results that you are proud of and that can contribute to the work of others!
We were ‘bumping up projects' with 30 participants and 3 trainers from Ireland, Spain, UK, The Nederland’s, Lithuania, Romanian, Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, Georgia, Ukraine, Greece and Belgium. This training course connected Youth and Community workers, Volunteers, Youth Leaders, Activist and Media Professionals.
We used interactive, non-formal educations methods, such as experiences and expertise sharing, group work, facilitated discussions, simulations and daily reflection sessions. We also had two guest speakers and a visit from Youth Group that is using street art to advocate for social issues.
We measured our final output/ impact by looking at the improved knowledge, skills,
attitudes and behaviours of participants, and the impact on the participating
organizations and target groups that they work with. These final findings:
Impact on the participants
Improved knowledge of:
• Why visibility and dissemination is important in international youth and community
work;
• Different tools for addressing issues of visibility and dissemination in their work;
• Various methodologies for exploring issues of visibility and dissemination;
• Miscommunication in international youth and community work field and common
points for getting lost in translations;
• Practical tools how to improve communication in the organizations and international
partnerships;
• Methodology behind effective communications;
• Good practice examples of international youth and community projects;
• Networking opportunities within Erasmus+ projects.
Skills of:
• “Learning by Sharing”, as workshops will required to use professional experience
examples;
• Active participation, through activities that required full participation;
• Verbal and nonverbal communications, through interactive with each other in the
group;
• Self-expression through English language, as it was an official language of this training
course;
• Designing and carrying out presentations, as participants had to present their work
and works of their organizations;
• Public speaking during presentations and workshops;
• Building networks through interactive network building activities;
• Group work by working together in small groups during specific activities;
• Co-operation in international context, through working together in international
groups;
• Developing new communication tools, through workshop on communications;
• Personal and professional reflection, through reflective space and time workshop.
Attitudes (Behaviour):
• Participants developed a positive attitude to group work, as many activities where
based on working together;
• Attitude of the ownership of this training through active contribution to the
workshops and flow of the training.
Impact on the organizations
• Engaging in European project and building networking for future collaborations;
• Finding partner organizations for future collaborations and Strategic Partnership
projects in particular;
• Had a look at the best practices of European colleagues and use these positive
examples in implementing a successful communication strategy;
• Up-skilling their staff/volunteer participants which builds competence of their
organization;
• Familiarize themselves with more possibilities within Erasmus+ program.
Impact on the target groups
• What should be expected is that youth organizations with a good communication
strategy will improve their accessibility for young people and youth workers, thus they
can start mobilising and supporting more youngsters;
• Partner organizations can expand their activities to European level using more of the
Erasmus+ possibilities and involve their groups into new projects and activities;
• As a result the organizations should be more capable to disseminate their project
results, this way they can improve the quality of their services and projects and more
youngsters or youth workers can benefit from it. By making these results visible
organizations will start at the same with creating support in society and among
stakeholders.
I was preparing, implementing and evaluating the training, as well as coordinating the trainers and volunteers team. So I was involved from the idea and creation of the application to the final reports.