TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Bogdan Hanganu
The purpose of the project “Connect Yourself to Employability” was to build up a constructive platform upon which youth workers and leaders could share and work on active strategies to fight youth unemployment and at the same time, raise youth employability. The idea of the training was based on the actual fact that nowadays plenty of opportunities are out there: educational, trainings, entrepreneurship, etc. Most of young people are not really aware of it, or just ignore it. The training was meant to give to the participants an opportunity to improve their skills and knowledge around the main themes, in order to transfer such capacity to their own community as well as to their organizations.
Creativity was a key concept for this project: if on one hand it is very important to explore which opportunities are given to youth, on the other hand, it is also crucial to stimulate creativity in order to pursue innovation and development.
The general objectives of the training are:
- to encourage the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship among young people
- to enhance creativity
- to increase the quality of future projects (local as well as international)
- to promote volunteering as an active measure for youth employability
22 youth workers from 10 different countries:
- Italy
- Romania
- Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Serbia
- North Macedonia
- Bulgaria
- Portugal
- Albania
- Montenegro
- Malta
The first day was meant to clarify the goals of the project and individual learning needs. To do this, the participants went through several dynamics designed to get to know each other little by little but of course such process started on the arrival day and ended with the departures. What we think it helped to support the interaction was the series of team building activities we set for the group. In pairs, small or the whole group faced several task with a different level of difficulties, from a very easy one to a mission impossible (which eventually was almost accomplished). At the end of the first day we had already many input to start working together more in details, the facilitators have split the group in four smaller ones, each of them lead by one facilitator for the whole week.
Then, the group has been involved into three main workshops regarding: free time, volunteering and entrepreneurship. These three topics were visibly related to each other, so it was simple to move forward or backward according to the participants needs. All the workshops have been designed with the same structure: an initial brainstorm in order to open up our minds on the topic and give a specific direction for the present day, then a series of timed acitivities in smaller groups let the participants speak and interact with each other, they could present their output. Specifically we went to analyze the amount of free time is available for workers, students and unemplyed persons, moving then to discuss what actions these people can do about self-empowerment and self-development. Eventually we created individual strategies which can lead to such objectives. Afterwards, we went deeper into volunteering, from a sharing moment we moved to all possibilities connected with it (festivals, sport tournaments, work camps, etc.). We had a special focus on EVS through an interactive simulation: we built up 3 different evs project (working with blind people, children and elderly), participants were explained the goals and the aims regarding the service and they could choose one of those project to apply for. Then each facilitator could talk with three persons at time and explain all they wanted to know about EVS, at the end the participants had also to deal with children, elderly and blind people, making up activities for them. The last workshop was about entrepreneurship, we touched many fields such as self-employment, curricula, business interviews simulations, social entrepreneurship (a special focus on it, we had also a meeting with a social entrepreneur). We mostly tried to stimulate the sense of initiative, showing ideas, presenting hystory cases but also giving practical input.
Once the group has completed the three main workshops, we could move to special sessions on project and time management. In particular, participants, individually at first and later on in small groups, were engaged in some timed exercises aimed at working with time pressure. One by one the exercises required always more interaction and responsibility, from one single task per person we came to multiple tasks for the entire group
Along with the principles and the priorities which are outlined in Youth In Action guide for 2013 as promoter of the initiative we might say that we found out a consistent coherence from what we planned, through what we carried out and eventually what we achieved together with the group of young people involved. It goes without saying, that our expectations we slighlty different from what we thought in the first place, but that is not something wrong, on the contrary we have been positively surprised to explore new fields. For example, in spite of our continuous efforts of showing business ideas, social entrepreneurship, project management and so on, what the participants found more interesting was our talks about volunteering. We went through evs, international civil service, work camps and that seemed to inspire them most, further when we connected it with “free time” session it turned out to be even more interesting.
Amongst the skills which have been most developed , we can say that spirit of initiative was surely one of them. We continuously gave them challanges, tasks, works, always timed and we provided additional tools, frameworks, scenarios, backgrounds. Most of these activities were just input or seeds and it was up to them the way to develop the task or present it, eventually we came across very interesting ideas, some of them were so detailed that even for the facilitators were uneasy to follow.
Beside this, one of the greatest achievement was the fact that we have been able to build up a group and consolidate it within one week. What we mean by this, is that everyone was involved in the process, there were connections and right after the beginning of the activities all the people were connecting to each other in a way or another. The fact that helped much was to mix up the groups repeatedly, so eventually everybody had worked with everybody,And of course, stronger bonds have been created inside each reflection group and even stronger ones during informal moments.
We believe the needs and interest of the participants have been fulfilled in a way or another. They gained new skills and knowledge, they made connections with other organizations or just people, they opened their mind on new fields of action (social entrepreneurship, volunteering), they explored themselves into an intercultural environment (sharing and learning through non formal), etc.
- Co-creator of the project application
- Trainer
- Coordinator of logistic aspects
- Evaluation and report