TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Milena (Lazic) Nikolic
DayCul training course aims at providing basic knowledge for youth workers to work with cultural differences focusing on cultural diversity in daily life.
Topics addressed were Culture, Identity and Culture, Intercultural Dialogue, Prejudice, Stereotypes and Discrimination, Possible ways for developing understanding and accepting differences, Media Tools.
24 youth workers and leaders coming from Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Finland, Slovenia, France, Estonia, UK, Romania, Poland, Turkey, Portugal.
Team of Trainers
Panayiotis Theodorou - Cyprus
Salvi Greco - Italy
Milena (Lazic) Nikolic - Serbia
The 5th edition of DayCul had a different design than previous editions regarding the methodology. Based as always on experiential learning, non formal education/learning, this edition of the training course had a relevant characterization with self-directed-learning. This direction was taken to enable participants to work on the specific topic of the training from a very personal perspective, proposing and choosing elements on which to work and implement.
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.
Before opening “the space” for self-directed-learning 2 full days were dedicated to a specific group-building and personal development activities. This approach provided a proper amount of time for reflection, assessment, evaluation, at the personal level, in pairs and in small groups.
Participants had:
-Created 5 media projects focused on various aspects of Culture such as: Relationships, Identity, Music, Literature and Stereotypes which were exhibited to the local community of Delnice, Croatia on 02nd of July, 2014. All media projects can stand also as tools/methods which can be used in training sessions or for public presentations in informal places like bars, streets, open spaces;
-Gained strong awareness about the personal learning process, thanks to self-directed learning approach and the personal reflection tools which were used during the training;
-Understood the multiple forms of culture and intercultural dialogue through exploration of cultural diversity from a perspective of everyday life;
-Been stimulated and challenged to use very different cultural environment as a tool to discover identity;
-Discovered and acknowledged the importance that influence of culture has on person’s perception of reality, everyday behaviour and identity;
-Discussed common European values;
-Taken initiative to create activities and projects on intercultural learning for the local contexts and realities;
-Created an interactive learning and reflection group of youth workers that will afterwards lay the foundations for future international cooperation in European Youth projects.
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.