TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Julia Motta
It was a training course about methods and approaches in international youth work, aiming at networking and further developing of the partnerships between social youth work organisations from Lauenburg/Germany, Lublin/Poland, Tokat/Turkey, Nurmes/Finland and Buskerud/Norway.
All the involved partner organisations have been working with some organisations in Lauenburg before. But they were not linked to each other so far. Therefore youth workers from Lauenburg initiated the idea, contacted all the partners in order to bring them together and to get a training course together about quality aspects in international youth work.
The training course has been the first part of a project in which a youth exchange will be developed and undertaken together and another training course will be done afterwards to further develop the network and evaluate the common experiences in the project.
The target group were youth and social workers from Germany, Poland, Turkey, Finland and Norway.
The facilitator team was concisting of two trainers, one from Germany, one from Poland. Besides, their were representatives of each organisation part of the bigger team, who were involved in the preparation and also took some responsibilities for part of the programme during the course.
Methods to getting to know each other (experiential methods/adventure pedagogics)
Methods and tools for intercultural learning, communication, conflict resolution (non-formal and experiential methods).
Small group works.
Plenary sessions with discussions.
Evaluation methods (visualized and creative).
Excursions/visits of youth organisations nearby.
The training course increased the mutual understanding of of each other's organisations and "realities" in youth work. The participants could discuss approaches to non-formal learning and facilitating international youth groups. Also they were developing further ideas for the youth exchange that they are undertaking together as a next step. All of them have got new ideas concerning methods, theoretical background of concepts (of culture, communication etc.), and youth exchanges.
I was - together with my collegue Agnieszka Brodacka-Ochnio - a facilitator and organiser during this activity. Being involved in the project from the scratch (writing the application, managing the communication with all the partners) I was developing the idea together with the five partners and we integrated different wishes and need into the programme.