TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Dora Preszeller
Group leaders of youth exchanges being an important part of the Erasmus+ programme has a
significant called youth exchanges and group leaders play an important part of it. Group leaders who can create ideas and bring positive change in their communities and local realities.
Being part of the projects, people helping youth and are contributing to achieve the aims of the
European Union and its values. This training course is aimed at leaders who can in the future
influence youngsters and can improve the quality of Youth Exchanges. We offer group leaders who might be beginners but also gained different experiences in the previous YIA programme to create appropriate models aimed at involving youngsters to initiate work and be pro-active in their communities by themselves. Our plan is to bring back the youth leader into the first position with its first steps and facilitate self-assessment as group leader. The problem usually is that often youth workers are using the same methods in their work and it is influence the quality and progress of different Youth Exchanges. This can be seen in many organizations and projects. Therefore we have the need of our organizations to improve and assist development of others. We promote and facilitate an active approach to come up with great ideas and find new appropriate models of motivating youth. This training course is aiming to improve the quality of YE by stimulating young people’s competences of initiative, creativity and entrepreneurship. Also to improve leaders' strategies of motivating youngsters and through their self-evaluation find new ways and methods for future projects. The participating network of organizations has aims to develop competences of participants from
different countries, open their mind and give them a chance to discuss issues, that really affect them ad their youth work.
The training course “Peace Leaders+” was held in Lecce, Italy from 3-10 May 2017 with 25 participants from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, Romania, Italy, Austria, Greece, Denmark, Bulgaria, Slovakia and United Kingdom. Target group was youth as target group of the participating NGOs and group leaders .
Project Peace Leaders+ was based on the belief that group leaders of youth are able to increase the quality of Erasmus+ youth exchanges by finding appropriate models to motivate youth to actively participate in the youth exchanges and thus gain new skills and knowledge. The main idea was to find this form of motivation where the group leader is not a teacher or superior but instead plays an active role of a facilitator who knows how to successfully involve and motivate youngsters. Following this model, the people assisting youngsters during international projects are helping, step by step, to also achieve the aims of the European Union and its values.
The training proposed to train actual youth leaders to be better facilitators of activities
based on non-formal education methodologies in youth exchange in an international and local levels. All partners have been partners and organizers of youth exchange confirmed the need of improving the competences of their youth leaders in order to make them more capable to understand their role and implement activities. The training was based in actual needs of the partners after several conversations and close cooperation. In the evaluation process participants disseminated and organized at least 1 workshop per NGO and participated in a youth exchange as group leader to be measure the success of the training course.
Some videos:
https://www.facebook.com/vulcanicamenteassociazione/videos/1353599124725410/
https://www.facebook.com/vulcanicamenteassociazione/videos/1352405838178072/
My role was to be one of the trainers, prepare an end-to-end training course based on learning expectations, including the development of content, writing, creating and delivering materials. The topic covered was mainly mindfulness, effective communication - active listening, public speaking, mindset.
Dora was a very professional, caring, mindful trainer. Organizing the project with her it was very fruitful and enriching for the organisation and participants.