TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Hochstein Norbert
Our aim was to improve youth entrepreneurship and train youth workers and active young people to keep youth work connected to the actual local reality, offer learning and support in becoming successful in their personal, professional and community life, promote the importance of renewal and adapting activities to the needs of the new generations and the 21st century context, and improve methods, practices and youth worker skills.
Our intervention areas were:
- monitoring and quality improvement of ongoing projects
- human resources management
- coaching teams in the start, realisation, and evaluation of projects, initiatives and social business
Objectives:
- to improve the quality and sustainability of youth projects, initiatives, and social business
- to improve professional competences of youth workers
- to share best practice, practical tools and skills for coaching and the conscious use of YouthPass
- to encourage dissemination and the creation of new projects within E+
Participants were coming from 12 NGOs and informal groups form 12 countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the Netherlands and Hungary.
The training course involved youth workers, NGO staff and trainers, mentors, coaches, counsellors, consultants, peer educators who support youth groups in creating and monitoring projects. Themes: coaching team entrepreneurship and human resource management by given tools. Participants practiced the tools directly by coaching each other.
Methods:
- structured exercises, using outdoor, dance, theatre, art, problem solving games
- debriefings on learning outcomes
- self-directed learning according to participants’ learning goals and YouthPass
- daily reflection in groups, journal-keeping, mid-term and final evaluation
- outdoor training
- methods and tools explained by trainers, practiced by participants directly
- facilitated discussions
- information about Erasmus+
The TC shared tools for human resources management, creating and monitoring projects, directly adaptable into the ongoing activities.
From the point of the key competences:
Learning to learn: recognizing own learning needs, finding motivation, setting learning objectives and plans, finding and selecting opportunities in non-formal learning and international mobilities, using YouthPass
Social and civic competences: cooperation, teamwork, leadership, recognizing and building up one’s role in a team and in a community, seeing networking and grant opportunities.
Cultural awareness and expression: ability to connect to, communicate with, involve and work together with people from different cultural backgrounds, other countries and new sub-cultures, e.g urban/rural, diverse working teams, new social environments; understanding other’s situation and needs and representing our own in a respectful and open way, knowledge of cultures and the perspectives of our peers and partners in Europe.
From the side of the target group:
Young people and youth workers’ courage, confidence, and trust grew, their verbal and non-verbal self-expression improved. They can balance thinking and action in a project better and they can translate values and principles to practical, physical action. They understand that change is natural and adapting to it is the key of sustainability. They are more motivated to stay engaged in long-term projects, willing to learn and improve.
Participants acquired a set of tools to support teams’ own view and understanding of themselves and their context, and their finding resources and relevant solutions. They are able to map learning needs, design and guide a coaching session as well a full non-formal learning process of a few months that accompanies a project. They understand team dynamics in diverse teams and can better facilitate teams in utilizing diversity as a resource, creating a comfortable and safe work-environment.
They have a variety of interactive and enjoyable tools to support teams in all project phases, which serves monitoring and evaluation, through this the continuous improvement of the projects.
Their professional skills improved, such as non-verbal communication, confidence, trust, self-expression, giving and receiving feedback, asking questions, active listening, setting activities with a learning dimension.
In See beyond when I was working with the group my focus was on the following areas, skills, competences and values:
•mapping needs and reality
•designing and facilitating a non-formal learning process, setting activities with a learning dimension, guiding reflection and evaluation
•techniques and points of planning, monitoring and evaluation;
•understanding and facilitating team dynamics in diverse teams
•non-verbal communication, confidence, trust, self-expression
•supporting volunteers by coaching and mentoring techniques
•creating a comfortable and safe work-environment
•giving and receiving feedback
•asking questions, active listening
•YouthPass as a framework for coaching