TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Nuno Da Silva
6 South European NYC’s and 5 African NYC’s, developed a cooperation project aiming to:
-develop non-formal education training strategies and trainers pools as practical instruments of NYC’s youth work
-youth participation and youth policy development, as well as capacity-building and leadership empowerment
-strengthen NYC’s role as spaces of youth activism and participation in decision making on issues relevant to youth
-reinforcing their contribute to the development of society
-develop the intercultural dialogue and cooperation among African and European NYC’s, youth organizations and youth leaders, envisaging the development of a longer-term strategic vision of the African-Europe NYC’s cooperation,
-face together the current global interdependence challenges and identify possible solutions to the inequalities and inequities which still endure within the North-South realities.
The project included three residential events: a Networking and Partnership Development Event with participation of NYC’s board members, a Training for Trainers with participation of trainers from partner NYC’s and a Evaluation and Follow up Seminar with participants of prior residential events.
In between, the NYC’s tried to put the outcomes of residential events in practice. On the one hand, NYC’s should develop more intercultural dialogue and cooperation competences and therefore design and implement longer-term strategic vision of African-Europe cooperation. On the other hand, the partners worked out the development of training for trainers and trainers pools seeking an impact on the culture of the NYC’s decision-making bodies and in the dynamics of the platforms in terms of youth work, youth participation and youth policy development as well as in capacity to plan implement and evaluate educational activities with higher quality and impacts on the national level.
In addition to the former, a 5 days Training for Trainers was voluntary delivered by the team immediately after the first residential meeting in order to train 30 local young activist. It meant the “1st Training on NFE” in Guinea-Bissau.
NYCs from Portugal, Italy, Slovenia, Cyprus, Catalonia, Spain, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde and São Tomé e Principe sent in most of the cases 1 representative of the governing board and 1 trainer.
The 3 people team was coordinated by Nuno da Silva, from Portugal, and composed by Simona Mursec, from Slovenia and Brais Fernandes from Galicia. In some of the steps also included Sona Candé, from Guinea-Bissau and the portuguese trainer and researcher Andreia Henriques.
At any moment counted with the full support of the portuguese NYC. In the second and third international gathering the event took place in coordination with activities run by North-South centre of the Council of Europe.
The first gathering began with formal format, in order to include representatives of the NYC governing boards and then make them experience and be concerned on NFE methods and its benefits towards improving their organisational culture and increasing youth participation. A key session that non only provided important content but promoted group-building and ICL was the presentation of each NYC's job: it consisted on talks in intercontinental couples and subsequent rounds of presentations performing the Africans as Europeans and vice-versa... it is not always easy to see young politicians stepping into someone else's shoes...
The additional training provided for locals in Bissau as “training on NFE” happened to be a big success, that not only included youth leaders from all around the country who said to had learnt to think out of the box, but it meant a crucial milestone in the creation of a pool of trainers in the Guinea-Bissau NYC.
The second international gathering -included in the 1st African University of Youth and Development- consisted on a training for trainers aiming the development of trainers pools at every NYC and the establishment of partnerships among the trainees. An empowering activity was the development of workshops with locals (planning, implementation, evaluation) through which several skills, attitudes and knowledges were challenged and worked out.
The evaluation seminar at the end of the year meant bringing together both representatives of the NYC governing boards and trainers in order to evaluate the process and plan the future.
A second 3.2 project planned as follow-up in the evaluation seminar was submitted, approved and implemented including most of the same partners.
All the partners developed NFE strategies in their organisations and promoted NFE methods among their NGO local partners. Namely, most of them implemented pools of trainers and/or modified their approach to youth... becoming more “youth friendly”.
Publication "Euro-Africa NYC Cooperation. NFE as a tool for social development":
http://issuu.com/cnjportugal/docs/revista_coop
The project deserved the "World Aware Education Award - 2010" by the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/nscentre/GE/WAEA/WAEA2010/Portugal_Youth_Councils_partnerships.pdf
I was designer, project coordinator and course director as well as one of the 3 people-team who implemented the project for the one year long. We shared tasks and responsibilities at an equal base, although I, as the coordinator, assumed further 'political' functions in the condition of coordinator of the Portuguese NYC pool of trainers.
Among the team I took on my shoulders several activities/sessions and took a special care on minding the team work and partners cooperation.
Both in the 1st African University of Youth and Development (Cape Verde, June 2009) and in the 1st Portuguese School of Youth and Equality (Lisbone, December 2009) in cooperation with the North-South Centre of the CoE, our team assumed several common roles and sessions, such as the facilitation of the closing ceremonies in the both of them.