TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Gabriel Brezoiu
MAP MO’REAL YOUth is a Training course focused on improving youth workers’ skills in terms of project management with relation to the inclusion of youth in isolated communities and their participation in the development of their communities. Many youth workers who work either professionally or informally with young people usually lack adequate skills to motivate local youth to engage in local activities and contribute to the development of their territories. Also, in addition to encouraging such youth to participate, youth work project managers often have difficulties finding adequate opportunities that respond to their youth’s needs. This could be due to their isolation from opportunities hub and lack of access to funds.
Our project seeked to train project managers on how to include youth in their communities in the community development process through youth participation and promote the ERASMUS+ programme to them so that they become aware of the various opportuni-
ties available to them as isolated organizations.
During the project, participating youth workers – some come from far away French Polynesia, where there is little visibility of the ERASMUS+ project– will benefit from various tools and methods to improve their project management skills. By using multicultural dialogue, multidimensional theories, empiric data, and non-formal education techniques, the MAP MO’REAL YOUth project will train 24 youth workers on issues related to project management and youth inclusion for community development.
MAIN OBJECTIVES
1. Provide youth workers with know-how in planning and developing projects that encourage local youth to participate in community building and development.
2.Increase the understanding of different quality aspects of youth mobility projects such as project design connecting topics, objectives and activities, cooperation with partners, intercultural learning, learning assessment, impact and results;
3.Provide an introduction to Erasmus+, focusing on main features and priorities (mainly for newcomers to the programme who have little idea of the programme
4.Support participants in putting in practice the learnings gained, submitting quality application forms to their NAs (through planning project ideas in partnership during one TC session and offering mentoring support after the TC);
The project brought together 24 participants from 8 countries (3 per country): France, French Polynesia, Italy, Estonia, Romania, Greece, Portugal and Sweden.
The training was based on nonformal education and included ice-breakers, working in intercultural groups, case studies, intercultural night, practical workshops, digital tools, field visits etc.
Between the two international activities, the participants implemented local activities according to their action plans.
Youth Workers were given various tools and methods, by using multicultural dialogue, multidimensional theories, empiric data and non-formal education to then be applied to their youth and communities. We feel the need to have this training course because we feel the need for improving the young peoples lives regarding decision making and also to improve the quality of Erasmus+ projects since we understand that the decision making processes are getting less accessible to young people and the ways of reaching to a decision is getting harder and harder with the advent of technology, multitasking and lack of attention.
To accurately deliver, manage, implement and disseminate a project and therefore have an impact in young peoples' lives and communities it is extremely relevant to know how to make decisions, being this especially hard for the newcomers in the Programme or for those starting to write their first projects, manage groups or even starting a job in
the field of youth. And sometimes also in case of organisations with some more experience, we notice not total awareness about the main quality features, phases and knowledge of the Programme and the strategies that one can have to better deal with challenges and problem-solving. We want to carry out this project following the invitations and suggestions from our partners on sharing our methods and knowledge with them, in order to improve their skills in Decision Making, planning and management, but also opening to less experient in the Erasmus+ programme and its opportunities for active citizenship and youth participation.
The activity was marked as a good practice by the French National Agency.
I was part of the pedagogical team together with my colleagues from France, French Polynesia and Portugal. We have split our tasks regarding the activities facilitation and tried to mix various training styles.