TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Dragan Atanasov
Main aim of this project was to contribute to the process of transforming the communities divided by religious, ethnic and/or cultural differences into integrated multicultural societies with active intercultural cooperation and dialogue, through raising the awareness of a group of youth leaders about the theme of cultural diversity and through supporting their development as youth workers and peer educators in this field in their communities. In this way, the training course was focused both on supporting the target group of the project (youth leaders from divided communities) and on making further impact on the local communities involved.
This project was implemented under Action 4.3 of the Youth in Action Programme and it involved 24 participants from 11 Programme countries. The project team was international as well, and it consisted of one organizer from Germany and two trainers - one from Germany and one from Macedonia.
The selected participants were young people who were in some way youth leaders in their communities, but who were also active in their organizations. All organizations involved in the project were working with young people from divided communities.
The activity program was divided in two main parts. The first part was devoted to exploring the project theme, when the participants were involved in a process of understanding themselves and their own identity, cultural identity and the meaning of cultural diversity. During this part the participants were also introduced with intercultural sensitivity, intercultural dialogue and cooperation. Methods used in this part were combination of sharing, inputs and various individual and group exercises.
The second part of the program was devoted to training the youth leaders as facilitators and peer educators. It included both theoretical introduction to youth work and non-formal education, and practical work on designing and implementing workshops for young people.
As a result of the training course, the participants designed and implemented six workshops for young people relevant for their work. The workshops were done during the training itself and the participants received feedback from the team of trainers. In addition, the last day of the training was devoted to initiating and developing project ideas. In total, the participants developed four project proposals that could be applied for funding under the Youth in Action Programme.
The activity program was implemented by a team of two trainers, from Germany and Macedonia. As a full-time trainer, I was responsible for planning and implementing the activity program.