TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Maria Kousoula
Brief Description of the Training Course
Human rights education is defined as the learning process that builds up the required knowledge, values, and proficiency of human rights of which the objective is to develop an acceptable human rights culture. According to Amnesty International, Human Rights Education (HRE) is a way to empower people so that they can create skills and behavior that would promote dignity and equality within the community, society, and all over the world. As Europe has become culturally diverse as a result of migration, how human rights are taught in intercultural societies is of utmost importance. It is necessary, that youth are enabled to develop a respect for their own cultural identity and values of others. The most common approach towards HRE is dogmatic, but different cultures interpret human rights in different ways.
The project collected and shared experience and best practices at the national, regional, and European levels. After the project, participants have learned methods and specific techniques, enabling them to train youth to be individuals, who are able to contribute to settling the rules in society, supervise what they have observed, and undertake responsibility for being a citizen. This project promoted that the partner countries developed their prosperous societies where every person is respected.
The following objectives have been set in order to reach the aims as described above:
-To increase participating youth workers' competencies on how to approach cultural diversity while teaching human rights.
-To empower young people to be responsible citizens, educators, and advocates for human rights.
-To give youth the possibility to make a direct influence and contribute to social change for a better society.
-To share best practices on preventing discriminative, violent, and radical behaviors among young people.
-To develop a network of like-minded individuals and organizations ready to cooperate on future projects related to human rights and intercultural learning.
-To develop a concrete plan for follow-up projects and local activities focusing on human rights in an intercultural context.
The target group of this project consisted of 29 youth workers and active members of youth organizations coming from 9 countries: Greece, France, Ukraine, Denmark, Italy, Moldova, Armenia, Sweden, Georgia.
All the methods used during the project were entirely based on the principles of non-formal education. The activities planned for the project included dynamic and interactive team exercises, expert input and discussions as well as individual and group reflections. The trainers put a lot of effort into creating a timetable with a proper balance between theoretical and practical parts, providing participants with an opportunity to get familiar with the idea of human rights across cultures and its connection to promotion of anti-discrimination among the youth. At the same time, they took part in exercises and sessions, which they can implement after the project while working with young people with diverse cultural backgrounds.
The training course was aiming at strengthening participants' competences useful in the field of working with young people with diverse cultural/migration backgrounds who are at risk of exclusion due to their culture/nationality/religion. Activities during the training course were balanced between theoretical knowledge and practical exercises. Participants first acquired information on various aspects of human rights education and got a new approach towards promoting human rights in culturally diverse societies. After the theoretical parts, youth workers explored more practical exercises based on intercultural dialogue, that can be further on used in their respective local communities to promote dignity and equality within their community.
Co-trainer.