TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for SARA MANDOZZI
The training course aimed at deepening the possible forms of participation, specifically in urban areas, that are needed to set a concrete regeneration and requalification, from the socio-cultural and the space organization point of view. The interventions in some local, urban and suburban backgrounds, implemented during the project, was focused on social, cultural and environmental improvements in a long term, sustainable perspective. In order to achieve the following goal, participants have been involved in the detailed needs analysis of the different backgrounds of origin and shared the good practices adopted in each country to facilitate the socialization and participation.
Furthermore, during the training, they proposed and implemented deep-rooted activities where streets, squares, green areas, public buildings and spaces could become the stage of social inclusion and cohesion dynamics.
The group was composed by 16 youth workers, peer educators, representatives of youth centres and citizens active at local level, with past experience in voluntary work and daily work/cooperate with young people in communities.
Participants came from Italy, France, Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Turkey and Germany.
Participants were youth workers which work in youth centres, often settled in the outskirts of big cities. These places, affected by the lack of public services and common spaces, are also marked by a visible decomposition of the local bond, and by many obstacles to youth participation and awareness. For the youth workers active in such areas has been very important by one hand, to meet in a peer to peer approach, other European colleagues and share the difficulties faced and the working methods used and, by the others, to gain new skills and methodologies from the non formal education field, to promote positive social dynamics, involving youth and adults, in the perspective of a common active citizenship.
Furthermore, the use of interactive, non formal education workshops and of new ICT technologies stimulated the participant’s creativity and their entrepreneurship and made them able to realize concrete and deep-rooted activities on their way back. The active methodologies proposed were based on the principles of the non formal education which promotes the active learning and the permanent interaction among trainees, trainers and facilitators.
These are the following outcomes achieved through the training:
1. deepening of the analysis of the local backgrounds at local and European level and problems/needs mapping;
2. definition of concrete strategies to intervene in the local backgrounds to activate participation and cooperation;
3. development of the conflict analysis skills and definition of possible solutions to manage, in creative and non violent ways, the conflicts that might raise in urban and suburban dimensions;
preparation and implementation of the street actions realized at local level in Zagarolo and aimed at activating new forms of socialization with the local inhabitants of the town.
Setting up of the activity programme and content's development;
Trainer in the active citizenship though non formal education workshop and in the public spaces reactivation workshop.