Step In! : Help Youngsters Come out of Their Shell and Step into Action

Aims & objectives

Aim:
Help leaders in youth organisations to develop skills for empowering youngsters to step into action.
Objectives:
● To reflect on the importance of the needs of young people in motivating them;
● To explore different ways of providing a “learning environment” where young people can try, make mistakes, and handle with responsibility;
● To exchange ideas, experiences and best practices in activating young people at personal, civic and social level;
● To develop the ability of young people to turn ideas into action in order to facilitate their sense of initiative and entrepreneurship and thus become more competitive in the job market.

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

The target group consists of Youth workers, Trainers, Youth leaders and Project managers who coordinate volunteers and members and look for new ideas, tools, methods and best practices to involve them more actively. The participants were from the countries of Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Turkey and the U.K.

Training methods used & main activities

The training methods chosen belong to the non formal education spectrum and have participatory orientation. Main activities used include group and pair work, real life simulations, plenary discussions, brainstorming, energizers, short ppt presentations with theoretical chunks, individual and group reflection

Outcomes of the activity

By the end of this Training Course, the participants were able to:
● Reflect on their individual needs, motivation, attitudes and behaviour in working with young people;
● Develop self-awareness on their contribution on the process of empowerment of young people;
● Have a better understanding of the elements and importance of a “learning environment”;
● Analyse the needs of young people they work with;
● Develop a need-based approach to provoke self-initiative and active attitude;
● Support young people to take responsibility for their personal and career development;
● Broaden their horizon via different ideas, tools, methods and best practices.

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

•Participate in the joint design of the overall training programme;
•Run some of the sessions;
•Creating a safe learning environment for participants to be able to exchange ideas, good practices, self-reflect;
•Facilitate debriefing sessions and manage one of the Reflection Groups.

I worked on this training for 5 days as a full time trainer.