TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Katerina Martinkova
The project aimed to bring together youth workers, people working as professionals or as volunteers in various NGOs and other supporting professions, such as teachers or social workers who were interested in the topic of empowerment of the youth and wanted to share their practices and learn new tools and methods that would be usable in their everyday personal and professional life.
The main topic we were addressing through the project is the youth unemployement.
This project aimed to reach those who work with youth, especially with the cathegory of youth with fewer opportunities and to provide them with new tools and methods that they would be able to use in two perspectives. The first one is the perspective of youthworker ́s personal and professional life, meaning that
the project aimed to create opportunities for them to move forward in their careers, gain new experience and skills and develop personally.
The second perspective wass the perspective of the youth, who would benefit from being introduced to the outcomes of the training by the youthworkers, back in their countries.
Project objectives:
1. To empower the youthworkers in developing their personal and professional skills and
providing them new ones to make them more competent in their field and on the labor
market.
2. To develop tolerance between diverse cultures by creating a cooperative environment for their representatives
3. To empower the participants to see themselves as a possibility and to use their own creativity to create new results and take the entrepreneurial spirit back to their countries
4. To strengthen social inclusion of youth by improving their awareness of their values and attitudes
5.To share best practices of cooperation in presented NGOs and to create a base for further
development of representatives
The project targeted youthworkes, trainers and people working with people, coming from the Czech
Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Greece, Macedonia and Italy.
In total there were 34 people invovled (including participants + trainers + small team)
The whole programme was very experiential and based on “learning by doing” approach.
It was an intense personal development project during which participants experienced 10 full days of personal development activities, outdoor physical activities, creative workshops, simuations, discussions, reflections.
Regarding the results, impact and long-term benefits of the project, we want to emphasise the
development of participating NGOs – the participants are reporting back getting involved in
youth work in more active way, designing new projects with personal development tools
acquired from the training, some of them even started their own NGO. For us it confirms that
the competences acquired in the project are being used and transmitted forward. Another of
the results worth mentionning is establishment of closer cooperation with foreign NGOs –
getting to know each other personally we know we can rely oneach other and we have already
created new partnerships in project newly applied.
I was the deisgner of the project - writing the project application, coordinating the project, evaluating it.
I delivered the programme together with a colleague trainer, Marija Wazi.