TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Anna Huminiak
The purpose of Economic Forum of Young Leaders is to create an international think tank consisting of representatives of European future elites who act at a local level in their own countries as well as initiate joint projects that allow to build the better tomorrow.
400 participants from 43 countries
There was an intro phase online before forum and online facilitation after the forum.
During the Forum participants were invited to create partnership projects as well as to share their skills and knowledge.
Thus, we created an environment which inspired development of the „community of practice”, which will be active also after the Forum.
In order to achieve it we used several IT tools and social media which allowed for equal access to project results, underlined the value of active participation as well as documented the flow of the workshops, discussions held and the conclusions. The IT tools which were used included: Facebook, Padlet, Magisto and Piratepad.
There was also organised by trainers national evening with learning stations, and project booster.
As a result of group discussion, experiences sharing and learning from good practices
participants pointed out rules that defines a leader aiming for good partnership:
Know your partners and built cooperation on trust, synergy and mutual benefit.
Know yourself as a partner – what your aims and goals are, what resources you have, what is your field of interests, what are your boundaries, what are the bases of your work;
Write with your partners 'Memorandum of understanding' to be clear and fair since
the beginning.
As a leader develop democratic rules for discussions and decision making; learn how to look for concensus.
Set clear goals together with your partners, manage your resources, divide tasks
and roles transparently, make an effort to integrate the team.
Be flexible and ready to adapt to the change.
Take care about the proper preparation and learn continuously in order to understand better the background and cultural specifications of your project members. Remember you are mutual dependent. Increase your awareness of local laws and cultural rules. Be open-minded!
Be courageous to ask for help to your partners or external experts (psychological support, cultural facilitator, business advisor) whenever you need it or situation requires.
Plan all activities with all partners carefully, in advance, and monitor them together. Monitor and analyse political and economical tendencies in order to avoid risks. Monitor the level of motivation, too!
Use monitoring at every phase of the project as a learning experience and chance for accountability, where learning comes both from measurements of success and failure.
Adjust tools to team members' experience, knowledge, engagement.
In communication remember about honesty, fairness, discretion.
In orded to build accountability in partnership respect ownership of ideas, ensure fair and equal contribution and refuse blaming.
In external communication develop the concept of the project together with your partners: deepen an understanding of your audience and match them with right communication channels.
In DEOR go creative with use of social media, challenges, viral, network capacity, opinion leaders at the same time avoid images and messages that could stereotype, sensationalise or discriminate against people, situations or places and respect author and privacy rights.
Elaborate and implement inclusion strategies into your project and make organisational structures accessible in order to give people possibility to engage / participate/ contribute.
Co-facilitator before, during and after forum.