TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Brais Fernandes Álvarez
The major aim of this long term training course was to equip trainees with skills, knowledge and tools to manage the process of defining, preparing, implementing and evaluating projects on the youth field, at national or/ and international level. Some of the achieved objectives are:
-To understand the theory & practice of European Youth Projects
-To become familiar with the philosophy of the Youth in Action programme, specially all what is related to the 1.1 action.
-To develop participants’ skills, attitudes and knowledge in the areas of team work, project management and partnership building.
-To learn how to design and plan a learning process
-To explore different training methods and methodologies during the seminar and to reflect on them
-To develop the needed training skills for the implementation of further projects, and to cooperate in network with other participants and youth workers
-To motivate and enable participants to act as multipliers, sharing their acquired competencies and experiences, and to create a space for sharing good practices of youth work from all over Europe
-To promote non formal education, peer education and life long learning process
Members of NGOs from Poland, Latvia, Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Estonia, Czech Republic and Galicia.
The 3 people team included Kasia Szaida and Anna Polus, both from Poland.
A strong variety of methods was used during the whole process, not only in order to achieve the concrete objectives of each session, but in addition to make trainees aware of the diversity of approaches, tools and methods existing through experiencing them and reflecting on their own experiences.
Example of the learn-by-doing approach: As one of the main contents of the LTTC was to promote the implementation of Youth Exchanges, during the first gathering participants experienced a two days long simulation consisting on a sort of youth exchange within the training, that was then evaluated, debriefed and used as common experience in the subsequent learning process.
In the second training, participants experienced a one day long game on Youth in Action programme procedures and practicalities, as an introduction to the real work on the development of their own project proposals.
Special effort has been done during this long term training in adapting the content and flow to the specificities and needs of the trainees. The self-assessment of the own learning played a very important role in each of the steps, and the self-development -not only as youth workers but as individuals and citizens- became the complementary objective of many of the methodological choices, seeking to combine rational and emotional approaches and to bring answers to the different learning styles.
Official website of the project:
http://www.youthwork.pl/
Blog, youtube channel and facebook page created by the participants during the first of the gatherings:
http://wroclovesteps.wordpress.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/STEPtoyouthwork
Movie, educational leaflet and publication are under work
I was one on the 3 people team. All kind of tasks -besides administrative issues- I happened to perform in such a small team during so long time perspective. I would like to remark the extremely comfortable team work atmosphere and the complementarity among the trainers.
My main responsibilities might have been to mind the content and energy flow at every moment, and to propose creative solutions and non-rational approaches each time we felt it was needed