TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Teodora Panuş
The webinar series aimed to build democratic literacy and civic participation skills among young people from Ukraine, one session at a time. Teodora's session focused on what democracy is, how decision-making works at local, district, and central levels in Moldova, and how young people can enter those processes — using Moldova as a lived case study with direct relevance to participants' own contexts.
Around 100 young participants from Ukraine, joining online. Teodora facilitated from Moldova, making this a cross-border exchange between two Eastern Partnership countries. Session recordings were made freely available after each webinar, extending reach beyond the live cohort.
The session combined a structured lecture with interactive non-formal methods: a Slido-based icebreaker, group case study analysis across fictional democratic failure scenarios (small groups, then merged groups building on each other's findings, then Slido submission), and a live Q&A. Participants received a self-paced follow-up task involving case analysis, community dissemination, and drafting ideas or proposals for their local contexts.
Participants built a working understanding of democratic principles and Moldova's youth participation framework — key legal instruments (Law no. 215/2016 on youth, Youth Strategy 2030) and institutional entry points from school councils to parliamentary committees. The case studies pushed participants to connect abstract principles to concrete situations: minority exclusion, corruption, low youth turnout, press freedom. The homework task moved learning from the session into each participant's own community.
Teodora designed and delivered the full session as sole trainer. She developed the presentation and case study scenarios, managed live Slido interaction with 100 participants, facilitated the group exercise, and designed the follow-up self-paced task.