TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Hermine Papikyan
- To find out the possible solutions of unemployment problem at personal, organisational and community levels by monitoring the real situations in different countries
- To improve abilities of youth workers, activists and young people from rural areas to increase their chances to get employed or make their own projects
- To give the tools and techniques on how to reach a low unemployment rates in rural areas
- To challenge young people to face unemployment reasons and related problems for understanding the lack of knowledge or experience and start to develop them
- To empower young people with the means of non-formal education
- To identify the real needs of youth workers working with rural youth and to assess their capacities.
- To understand the real needs of the rural job market and to discover the way to meet those needs
- To motivate youth workers to take part in social changes aiming at increasing youth employability by exploring their leadership potential
- To create new projects designed to lower the unemployment rates and keep youth to develop their rural homeland.
- To write a handbook with best practices and failures about rural developments.
The partner organizations work on rural youth development in their countries and address rural youth issues in their activities.
30 youth workers/young leaders coming from rural areas and/or working with rural youth from 9 countries (Germany, Hungary, Greece, Poland, Slovakia, Armenia, Ukraine, Jordan, Russia).
Through the activities we followed the Kolb cycle, i.e. experiencing – observing and reflecting – giving theoretical background – linking with reality and develop participants’ skills, attitudes, and knowledge in different areas, connected to the rural development. The workshops tailored to meet participants’ learning needs and will combine theoretical input with interactive exercises and tools for youth empowerment.
"In land we trust" was designed and structured in a way that gives participants the freedom to express themselves, to share their experience and skills, to learn as much as possible in terms of the main topics and to acquire new skills beneficial for their youth work. The whole project was mainly practice oriented and was a platform for generating and developing new ideas for rural youth development. On the one hand, the course workshops equipped participants with some practical skills, for example, the workshop on best practices and failures.
"In land we trust" was based on non-formal education methodology and techniques. To our main methods belong: open space, experiential learning, practical workshops, working in small groups and in plenary, open discussions, debates, simulations, role plays, etc. Particular attention was paid to such elements as interaction, cooperation rather than competition, holistic approach, intercultural learning, using participants’ experiences and taking in account the group dynamics and group needs.
Through the activities we followed the Kolb cycle, i.e. experiencing – observing and reflecting – giving theoretical background – linking with reality and develop participants’ skills, attitudes, and knowledge in different areas, connected to the rural development. The workshops tailored to meet participants’ learning needs and will combine theoretical input with interactive exercises and tools for youth empowerment.
"In land we trust" was designed and structured in a way that gives participants the freedom to express themselves, to share their experience and skills, to learn as much as possible in terms of the main topics and to acquire new skills beneficial for their youth work. The whole project was mainly practice oriented and was a platform for generating and developing new ideas for rural youth development. On the one hand, the course workshops equipped participants with some practical skills, for example, the workshop on best practices and failures.
"In land we trust" was based on non-formal education methodology and techniques. To our main methods belong: open space, experiential learning, practical workshops, working in small groups and in plenary, open discussions, debates, simulations, role plays, etc. Particular attention was paid to such elements as interaction, cooperation rather than competition, holistic approach, intercultural learning, using participants’ experiences and taking into account the group dynamics and group needs.
I was a co-trainer of the training course, responsible for the preparation and implementation of the whole training programme and all the training sessions along with my colleague.