TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Elena Tasheva
The project ‘Increasing Intercultural Competences and Awareness of Youth
Workers’ aims to address the following NEEDS that the consortiums of 10 youth
organizations active in the field of international youth work identified to be essential
to them:
-the NEED to provide their youth workers who were involved so far in local, or
national activities the opportunity to develop their competences to work in
international settings as participants, but also as youth workers delivering activities;
-the NEED to gain needed intercultural competencies, to increase their intercultural
awareness enabling them to work with mix-cultural groups at the local, national
level. At this moment, youth workers work mostly with groups that include young
people coming from the same backgrounds. Their need is to develop their
competences to be able to deliver more quality activities for groups involving young
people from diverse cultural backgrounds;
-the NEED to increase their capacities to create their own projects with the support
of the Erasmus + Programme. Youth workers are motivated to take work more
actively with the Erasmus + Programme, especially with youth exchanges, training courses and youth participation activities. They need to increase their understanding
of the Programme and project management of youth projects
30 youth workers representing North
Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Romania,
Italy, Spain, and France with the following profile:
- At least 18 years old, preferably in the age group 22 - 32, we would like to
involve youth workers who have 1-3 years’ experience in the field of youth
work. It means those who gain some experience in the field, can relate to
them, can analyze the challenges that they are facing in the youth field. As we
mentioned above, newcomers, youth workers, who are just starting with their
work in the youth field can become part of the group, as well. But we will
discuss their involvement individually to ensure group cohesion;
- Are able and ready to work in English, to communicate comfortably, to express
their ideas, thoughts, to contribute to group work;
- Are ready to work on the objectives of the project;
- strongly interested to develop their competencies in the field of intercultural
youth work, to increase their intercultural awareness;
- Ready to work on brainstorming of new project ideas in the framework of
youth work;
- Motivated to transfer lessons learned in the follow-up period and to act as
multipliers after the activity to increase the quality of youth work at local,
national, and international levels.
● Learning by doing method
● Ice-breakers and team building games to get to know each other.
● Workshops will leave room for guided but controversial discussions.
● Simulation games, practical work, brainstorming, interactive presentations etc.
to mainstream lessons learned on intercultural learning through visibility and
dissemination activities targeting youth workers, educators, not directly
involved in the activity;
● to prepare 5 video tutorials carrying the lessons learned and targeting youth
workers, educators, not directly involved in the activity;
● to prepare a description of 8 activities, identified by the directly involved
participants as the most useful in their learning process, and published them
on SALTO YOUTH website – TOOLBOX;
● to hold 3 live streaming sessions on Facebook, Instagram in the follow–up
period to present the results of the activity, to share lessons learned, and to
tackle any questions from the audience;
to organize 1 follow-up 1-day online training open for the representatives of
participating organizations and beyond to increase intercultural competencies
and awareness of youth workers, educators, leaders.
Trainer responsible for the program and the project results
This project was organized by our partner Next Generation Austria and our organization where Elena works was coordinator of the project. She undertook the role as one of the Trainers.