TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Dorit Machell (Fauck)
We believe that a clear vision helps you to reach your goals and communicate meaningfully with stakeholders: "Get Your Message Across", a interactive and experiential training course for NGO’s operating in the youth field that are interested in working on their communication skills. This course works with creative methods to support participants in defining their mission and vision and the story they want to tell. Following becoming more aware on how they communicate their identity. The training course also provides space and tools for the participants to develop partnerships with further
stakeholders and establish cross-sectoral cooperation within (and not only) the Erasmus+ programme.
• 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.
Participants came from following countries: Belgium, Croatia, France, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Poland, Portugal.
The trainers team consisted of following trainers:
Dorit Fauck (Germany), Valters Melderis (Latvia), Mafalda Morganti (Italy) and Réka Széplaki (Hungary)
Participants have the chance to experience a diverse mix of creative and artistic methods, good practices from the business field, group work, discussions, field visits and exchange of experience. Some of the key elements of the programme:
• Movement and improvisation theater - as a tool for getting to know each other and yourself;
• Storytelling - how storytelling can be used as a method to define and communicate your NGO’s mission and vision;
• 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 offered 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 compared communication strategies of the
non-profit and for-profit sector, to learn each other’s language.
• Field visits – we offered 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.
The training course offers tools and space to work on the communication (strategy) of ones NGO and at the same time improves the work of projects and the organizations as part of the project management. The participants evaluated that they improved their skills relevant for defining aims and objectives for their organizations and projects, and communicating their messages substantially. As a consequence they feel more comfortable to work towards not only cross-sectoral cooperation. They also mentioned that they developed their intercultural communication and planning skills, and their creative thinking. It was also said that the training course helped them with identifying what make their project fail and what to improve in future projects.
Developing the course plan and facilitating the training course in a team of four.