TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Valters Melderis
- To raise awareness of the need of a clear vision and mission for NGO’s working in the youth field to develop a meaningful communication with different stakeholders;
- To promote the importance of creativity as a fundamental communication skill by providing
different creative tools and methods;
- To improve entrepreneurial skills within the partnership building process by exploring what
we can learn from good practices in the business field;
- To encourage the establishment of cross-sectoral cooperation which can be supported by
new quality activities implemented in the frame of the Erasmus+ Programme;
Representatives of NGO's active in youth field, that are willing to improve their communication skills of their mission and vision in order to improve their possibilities to establish cross-sectoral cooperation within the Erasmus+ programme.
Countries represented - Belgium, Croatia, France, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Turkey, United Kingdom
• Movement and improvisation theater - as a tool for getting to know each other and yourself;
• Storytelling - we’ll explore how storytelling can be used as a method to define and communicate your NGO’s mission and vision and „get your message across”;
• Clowning - as a method to explore different aspects of communication. We see the clown as a particularly interesting character, as its language is based on setting a common goal and establishing an emotional connection together with its audience. We’ll offer a workshop on some clowning techniques as well as the opportunity to experiment interaction and communication with a real audience;
• Insights from the business field - in order to communicate effectively, we need to know our partners well. During the training course we will compare communication strategies of the non-profit and for-profit sector, to learn each other’s language.
• Field visits – we’ll offer to participants the chance to visit some of the good examples and cross-sectoral cooperation in Budapest as a way to inspire them for future actions back in their NGOs.
87.5% of participants evaluated meeting of their expectations of the training as almost fully or fully met. 87.5% of participants evaluated the methods of the training as useful and adequate.
Participants revealed that training was inspiring personally and professionally; participants felt being pushed out of their comfort zones through movement, theater and clowning sessions, which helped them to become more confident and prepared to challenge their fears in everyday life. Professionally, participants appreciated the "WHY?" model approach, going into deeper meaning of mission and vision and ways how to communicate it. Most of participants expressed that they would rethink the ways they communicate about their NGO's and/or projects to the "outside" world.
In the Facebook group of the training course participants kept sharing their successes after returning, for example, development of "Breizh Mea" organization (France).
I was involved in the training from it's beginning - developing the idea, aims, objectives, methodology and program flow of the training. During the training I was responsible for getting to know each other and group building session; "Passion night" facilitation; leading workshop and "practice in the city" of clowning; providing participants with methods of gathering their learning outcomes and evaluation of the training; leading one of the reflection groups at the end of each day.
As well, I was responsible for evaluating and reporting the training to Hungarian NA.