TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Evelina Taunyte
This was an Erasmus+ funded project with 2 training activities.
The general aim of this training project was to empower participants to design learning programs tailored to the needs and interests of young people by making the use of rural and/or urban environments they work in.
Specific objectives of these 2 training course:
-> To create opportunities for youth workers to test various approaches, methods and technological tools to be used for ‘Expeditions’ in rural/urban environments.
● To create a learning group environment for peer coaching and coaching from the trainers as support for youth workers to apply their learning to practice during the follow up phase.
● To put into practice the use of methods to assess and reflect youth work practices and competences using European recognition tools (Youthpass and Open Badges).
● To collect innovative youth work methods which can be applied with inclusion youth groups living in the deprived rural/urban environments
First training activity involved 27 participants. Second training involved 22 participants. In both courses participants were youth leaders, youth workers and trainers.
Participants are working directly with young people from inclusion groups in the deprived rural or urban environments or they were studying related subjects.
Participants were coming from Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Turkey.
Training courses used either rural or urban environments of the hosting places as a base and resource for learning and training activities.
The participants firstly were exchanging their experiences of making the use of their own rural or urban environments for young people’s learning.
Then they were faced with Expedition activities outdoors challenging them to explore the village's or city’s environment. Their tasks was to explore and identify opportunities for designing experiential learning programmes for young people.
After debriefing experiences participants were designing learning programmes in the particular rural or urban environment in the form of ‘Expedition’ where learning happens while moving across rural or urban spaces and using them for learning, inspiration and reflections.
During the course participants worked in international teams to develop and collect new methods, practice digital tools and discuss approaches.
The 2 articles from each training activities:
Rural Expedition: http://www.nectarus.lt/en/english-expeditions-learning-on-the-move/
Urban Expedition: http://www.nectarus.lt/en/next-urban-adventure-is-just-round-the-corner/
Examples of rural Expeditions created:
Outdoor expedition "On the Move": http://toolbox.salto-youth.net/1860
Outdoor expedition "Going OUT for getting IN": http://toolbox.salto-youth.net/1859
Expedition "Stressing Diversity": http://toolbox.salto-youth.net/1863
Examples of urban Expeditions created:
Actionbound Urban Expedition in Weimar:
http://toolbox.salto-youth.net/1921
Soundscape Urban Expedition
http://toolbox.salto-youth.net/1918
The impact for the participants was enhanced skills to design learning programmes specifically tailored to the characteristics of the target group and the specific environment (rural and/or urban). The participants of this training project enriched their portfolio with new methods, digital tools and new approaches to design learning processes.
I was in charge and involved in all of the stages of this training project: from recruiting partners to completing the application in preparation phase. Then I was part of the training team and supported learning of participants. Finally, I was involved in reporting this activity.