TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Dragan Atanasov
The aim of the training course is to support youth work practitioners to better understand the realities of young people in a changing Europe and to be more equipped to react upon them.
Objectives:
• To identify the relevant socio-political and cultural conditions that influence the lives of young people on local and European international level;
• to explore the contexts in which young people grow up today, and critically evaluate the current youth work responses to them;
• to understand reasoning and motivation behind young people’s views and attitudes, discover how opinions are formed and encourage critical thinking;
• to challenge/ radicalize the concept of diversity, exploring it based on a values-based, rather than from a normative policy perspective;
• to re-define the role of youth work practitioners in responding to socio-political and cultural conditions by applying values-based perspective of diversity;
• to discover opportunities to incorporate values- based approach to diversity within Erasmus+ activities and to support international cooperation among participants.
20 participants from EU and Western Balkan countries. The participants were working directly with young people a setting of non-formal learning and were expected to have awareness of diversity matters in Europe and their implications on young people in their local communities.
The team was comprised of two trainers and two representatives of the institutions organizing the event.
The training included a variety of non-formal learning methods. Prior to the training the participants were asked to do homework tasks (read articles, survey local young people) and conduct self-assessment.
During the training the participants deepened their understanding of diversity as a complex and complicated issue, and were presented with different perspectives and values that inform the actions of people. The participants also planned diversity activities that they implemented in a period of three months after the training. The same group gathered for the second part of the training course in September 2017, in Bosnia.
The activity program was implemented by a team of two trainers, from Latvia and Macedonia. As a full-time trainer, I was responsible for planning and implementing the activity program.