TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Milena (Lazic) Nikolic
The DAYCUL training project was born from a need to offer participants a chance to discover phenomena of culture and cultural diversity from the “real life oriented” perspective of differences in everyday life. In specific, exploring Food, Music, Languages, Identities, Communication patterns, Relations, Time, Personal culture, Relation towards other cultures, Roles in society and all the other things that shape our everyday life (beliefs, values and rules) that are deeply rooted in our culture.
The training course aims at developing the intercultural competencies of youth workers and leaders in organizing international youth projects through exploration of cultural diversity beyond simulations and use of it as a tool to discover identity (become aware of your own culture so that you can open to others who are different). The interaction with local community and environment is a very important element that was dealt within the process, during and after the training.
20 youth workers and youth leaders from Albania, FYRO Macedonia, Montengero, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Cyprus, Germany, Latvia and Romania.
Team of Trainers
Panayiotis Theodorou - Cyprus
Salvi Greco - Italy
Milena Lazic – Serbia
The methodology used is specific to non‐formal education and learning, both individual and group methods, taking into consideration participants’ learning needs with a creative approach (cooking, dancing etc.) to phenomena of culture and cultural diversity from the perspective of everyday life.
The methodology of Photovoice was used as a basic tool trough out the training course offering exploration and interaction with local culture. Therefore, unique methodological characteristic was practical implementation of knowledge gathered throughout the first 3 days of the training course where participants had a chance to use local environment as a setting to explore in the next 2 days specific aspects close to their interest related to the topic of the training course. The products of these explorations were presented through various media tools.
This self-directed and community-based methodology was an efficient way to capture landmarks of Culture in daily life of local community. It was also sole way of interaction and learning process with and from local reality because the final results were presented to the wider population of local community.
Furthermore, 2 specific methods were designed by the team of DayCul, were “CookLab” (food and cooking), and “Dancing blind” (music, dance, body expression), “to touch and feel” cultural diversity, mostly from the personal identity perspective.
Learning Space Dynamics, reflection groups, individual learning and personal development were also part of the agenda. Therefore, a proper amount of time was provided for reflection, assessment, evaluation, at the personal level, in pairs and in small groups and Youthpass was also introduced and used as an evaluation tool.
During 6 training days participants had:
-Created 4 multimedia projects presenting various aspects of Culture developed by international group in interaction with the local community using Photovoice methodology which were exhibited to the local community of Galatone on September 09, 2012.
Participants had:
-Developed knowledge and competence in key concepts of intercultural learning through exploration of cultural diversity from a perspective of everyday life;
-Acknowledged the importance that influence of culture has on person’s perception of reality, everyday behaviour and identity.
-Been introduced with the approaches to intercultural learning and possibilities to adapt it to their local contexts;
-Reflected about the importance of cultural diversity when organizing international youth projects;
-Been provided with information about existing possibilities and conditions for the development of SEE and European youth co-operation projects, with special focus on the Youth in Action Programme;
-Exchanged best practices and developed an informal network of youth workers in SEE region and EU countries.
I had a role of a trainer, meaning that I was responsible for design, implementation and evaluation of the training program. The training program was reviewed and evaluated every day and adjusted according to the learning needs of participants.