TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Silvia Turcu
This training course focused on fighting discrimination by empowering youth workers to act as human rights promoters in their organizations and local communities. The training challenged the western perspective on human rights and the manner we educate the youngsters to deal with the diversity of the multicultural society we live in.
More specific objects of the project were:
1. To raise awareness among participants about the importance of the diversity and human rights in the work with young people.
2. To encourage participants to act as diversity and human rights multipliers in their communities.
3. To create a set of methods to work in the area of diversity and human rights with young people.
4. To promote the Erasmus + Program as promoter of a wide range of opportunities that go to different directions.
The team was formed by two trainers, 4 members of organizing team.
Participants were 30 youth workers from Romania, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, France, Latvia.
The training approached subjects as: human rights (definition, history, critic of the concept, dimensions of the concept, etc.), capabilities theory, inclusion, diversity, non-formal education, etc.
Participants experimented a variety of non-formal education methods as: Human Library, simulations (to discuss about stereotypes/prejudices/discrimination), role plays, debates (about Environmental rights), video projections, World Cafe (to debate upon different dimensions of human rights), presentation (Capabilities theory vs. Human Rights theory), working in mall groups, reflection groups, workshops.
During this training course, participants gained knowledge about human rights concept, different dimensions of human rights, they were able to critically analyse human rights perspective, they debated upon concepts as stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination and gained deeper understanding of situation of various vulnerable groups from the perspective of human rights. In terms of skills, they developed communication skills, ability to work in a group, to design, implement and evaluate learning activities and they developed their critical thinking skills. They also became more respectful and tolerant for diversity, motivated to implement these competences into practice, more open minded and tolerant to ambiguity.
Together with my colleagues, I have been involved in developing the project application, designing, implementing and evaluating the learning activities, follow up activities and support for participants after the training course.