TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Darko Mitevski
The specific objective of the project is to equip group of youth workers with practical knowledge and skills on how effectively to use social media in increasing the visibility of the work of youth associations; how effectively to use social media for raising awareness (campaigning) on issues of concern for the young people; how to use social media as tool for civic engagement and social innovation; how effectively to use social media for increasing visibility and dissemination of the results of projects financially supported by the Erasmus + programme; and how to campaign on increased recognition and validation of competences gained through non-formal education activities.
There were 38 participants and trainers from 10 Countries: Germany, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Egypt, Ukraine, Turkey, UK, Spain.
The target group of participants was - youth workers and youth leaders, trainers, project managers, volunteers, and other that are interested in learning how to use IT tools for media visibility of their organization.
We were trying to have all non-formal methods of education, mainly learning by doing and at the same time also all to be connected with IT tools.
We had few main pillars as learning outcomes that we wanted to achieve:
- How to make professional photos, how to use the camera, where we presented the participants with the basic rules and ways, and then we asked them to do many tasks (make many types of photos). After they came back with the photos, we were analyzing them on the screen, why
some are good, how the other can be improved. We also explained how can they use all software that is there to still improve the photos(light, contrast, saturation etc)
- How to make professional videos, how to edit them - we had the same approach with these block of workshops where we additionally showed the participants the software possibilities, started using that software to edit the videos, using different templates within the videos. They had
many tasks to make videos on different topics, to edit them, feedback, then improving again then feedback again.
- How to make own website in two different platforms - Wix and WordPress. We gave short explanation about how the whole web development works so the participants understand the background. Then we all connected to the internet and built the websites (of their own organizations or new websites) step by step with the trainers leading the participants every step of the way. Half way trough we evaluated the websites, gave feedback and tips for improvement, and then we continued further.
- How to make different strategies for dissemination approach, communication with different target groups for one NGOs, public body
- one of the main goals was to show the participants the bigger picture and not only teach them IT tools that they can use. We spent a lot of time talking about the background, the strategy of one organization - what are the goals of the campaigns, what are the target groups that we want to reach, what kind of resources do we have, and how should we use those resources to reach the goals of the organization. During these
workshops we were working in small groups where the participants were putting the pieces together in the national groups based on the actual reality. This provided the bigger picture on how can we use the IT tools(Facebook, websites, dissemination) in order to reach some more
strategic goals
- How to make Facebook group or page, how to get fans, how to communicate with those fans, what do we want to communicate, when do we do it, how does the whole system works. And not just Facebook as a platform, but also twitter, Instagram, google+ and so on. We were
making real time campaigns and feed backing them, giving instructions how to improve them.
38 people on this projects (including the trainers who learned much on the topics where they are not experts) learned how to prepare
strategy, how to make photos, how to create their own website or Facebook page, how to actively target audience in their promotional
campaigns and make their communication strategies, learned many more dissemination tools.
We made a statistical overview of few of the most important questions in order to measure the satisfaction of the participants:
(1-5, 5 being the best grade)
How was the organization of the training in General? 4,73
How was the quality of the workshops/program? 4,53
How was the quality of the trainers? 4,81
https://www.salto-youth.net/tools/toolbox/tool/manual-for-ngos-learn-it-tools.1945/
I designed the training and held 1/4 of the workshops; selection, preparation and coordination the trainers team of 4 people; tracking and insuring that we reach the goals of the training; evaluation of the performance of the trainers team and adjustments, coordination with logistics team and partner organizations.