TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Milena (Lazic) Nikolic
“PEACE - Promoting European Active Citizenship in Europe” is a training course created from a need to offer participants a chance to identify the context of the term European Citizen (based on values not only on borders) and to empower youth leaders towards promoting active citizenship in their local context, having in mind their local reality, or better jet daily life perspective.
In specific the training gave opportunities of exploring ones’ identity, citizenship, citizenship within European context and ways of active participation within the local community.
Topics addressed were Europe, Identity and Europe, European Citizenship, Active Participation – Youth and Civic.
24 youth workers and leaders coming from Serbia, FYRO Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Latvia.
Team of Trainers
Panayiotis Theodorou - Cyprus
Salvi Greco - Italy
Milena (Lazic) Nikolic – Serbia
The methodology used is specific to non‐formal education and learning, both individual and group methods, taking into consideration participants’ learning needs with a creative approach, meaning methods specific to non-formal education and learning, both individual and group methods, taking into consideration participants’ learning needs.
Furthermore, unique methodological characteristic was practical implementation of knowledge gathered throughout the first 3 days of the training course where participants had a chance to use local environment as a setting to explore in the next 2 days specific aspects close to their interest related to the topic of the training course. The products of these explorations were presented through the photography, media and IT tools.
This self-directed and community-based methodology was an efficient way to capture landmarks of European Citizenship and Active Youth Participation represented in local community. It was also sole way of interaction and learning process with and from local reality because the final results were presented to the wider population of citizens of Pancevo throughout the “Open Media Session” organised on 05th of May 2014 at 21h in the Youth Centre of Pancevo (the venue of the tc). The audience had unique chance to see 4 media projects of the working groups but also to sense the concept of non-formal education in the European context through interactive process.
Participants had:
-Created 4 media projects focused on various aspects of European Citizenship such as Possibilities for Youth participation and it’s promotion, Concepts of national and european citizenship with focus on sense of belonging, Influence of Globalization on Culture in Europe and General concepts of Citizenship which were presented to the local community of Pancevo throughout the “Open Media Session” organised on 05th of May 2014;
-Developed knowledge and competencies in key concepts of European Citizenship through exploration of values, sense of belonging, rights and duties;
-Been challenged to explore their identity in relation to European identity;
-Been introduced with the approaches of active participation and possibilities to adapt them to their local contexts;
-Developed knowledge and competencies in active citizenship on a local level, but also in European context;
-Reflected about the importance of European citizenship and active participation when organizing international youth projects;
-Created an interactive learning and reflection group of youth workers that will continue to exchange best practices and afterwards lay the foundations for future international cooperation in the scope of the Erasmus + Youth projects in Europe.
I had a role of a trainer, meaning that I was responsible for design, implementation and evaluation of the training program. The training program was reviewed and evaluated every day and adjusted according to the learning needs of participants.