TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Daniele Nubile
The training is one of the supporting measures promoted by IBB e.V. in the context of ewoca³, a project that involves 45 European organisations and institutions active in the field of work with disadvantaged young people. The ewoca³ project aims, at the same time, to professionalize youth worker and foster international youth work addressed to youngsters with fewer opportunities through the realisation of 15 trilateral youth encounters every year, for three years.
Consistent with those aims, the particular objectives of the TC, realised also thanks to the Erasmus+ programme, were to provide the organisations and the youth workers with skills, knowledge and methods for being able to prepare, coordinate and lead their projects and support the youngsters along the process.
Different topics were brought up and discussed together with the group:
- Inter-culture and diversity;
- Group processes and dynamics;
- Conflict resolution;
- Leaderships styles;
- Language animations,
- Project planning;
- Legal frames;
The ewoca³ network involves 45 other organisations, beyond IBB e.V., from 17 different European countries, that are: Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Finland, Denmark, Belarus and Estonia.
Each organisation sent to the TC the participant that was going to be involved in the project as project coordinators and/or as youth leaders.
The training course was planned to support the youth workers in their work and projects addressed to youngsters with fewer opportunities. In doing so, the programme and the activities were designed keeping in mind the particular target group of the final youth encounters and, when it was possible, the team presented methods or games that could have been easily re-used by the participants during their projects.
At the beginning of the training course, after simple name-games and small playful activities aimed to get know each other, the focus was centred on the group through different team-building exercises. Games of language animation were introduced in order to ease the issue of language barriers. Simulation games or activities in small groups were then used to get deep into the topics of the TC, including moments of reflections and debriefing also, but not only, in plenary. As well, Betzavta methods were used to touch aspects as diversity, conflicts and democracy in groups.
Some frontal inputs were necessary to introduce some legal frames, visual evaluation methods were also used.
The training activity succeeded in preparing the 45 youth workers and project coordinators in planning and implementing successfully their projects. Moreover, the participants gained self-confidence, acquired skills and knowledge as well as they learnt methods to use in their daily work and not only during their youth exchanges.
The website: http://ewoca.org/live/en/ is a blog used directly by the young people during the 15 projects of 2015 and it collects their experiences. It represents, somehow, the evidence of the success of this TC.
As a member of the team, we all planned and designed the programme for the activity. During its implementation, we all introduced topics or proposed activities. Also we facilitated brainstormings, proposed and facilitated activities or sessions of reflections and moderate discussions. Furthermore, when needed, we also counselled participants individually or in groups.