TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Darko Mitevski
The training was intended to give practical experience to the NGO leaders about how to create a sustainable organizations. In order to do this we had to challenge everyone: Trainers, organizers, participants.
The experienced trainers were guiding the participants through challenges where they learned how to:
* Create long term strategy for the organization.
* Motivate more people to join their organization and work on the projects.
* Insure sustainable and long term funding for the organization.
* Learn skills and competencies that they will need in order to develop their organizations and increase their capacity.
The target group were leaders of NGOs, project manages, key people that are going to be driving the development of their organizations in the future years.
- Cyprus, Turkey, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany
- Simulations and role playing - We had leadership development day where with the trainers team we created custom simulation to satisfy the needs of the quieter participants that didnt have a chance to lead a team until that moment. 5 Different teams(Government, Green Peace, Ford Motor Company, Labor Union, and GE). Each group had different goals and budget and had to negotiate, create strategy and tactics, make alliances, balance, give in, etc. The trainers were recording the conversations and giving individual and group feedback.
- We had skills university day. The participants chose which skills they want to learn on a poll weeks before the training, so with the trainers team we could have prepared - 10 different skills skills(body language, presentation skills, time management, team management) - all learning by doing - task oriented exercises that the participants can go to on hourly rotation basis and receive valuable feedback from trainers.
- We had outdoor day - Where we had many tasks where the participants were supposed to demonstrate leadership, team work, fighting for the teams benefit, strategy etc. Some tasks were designed not to be reachable so the participants can feel how it is to lose, and to help them grow as a team in failure. There was briefing and debriefing.
- We used large number of techniques and methods like theater plays, team buildings, GTKEO, personal goal setting and personal reflection techniques etc
The training challenged the mindset of the people and made them realize which are the strengths that they have and which are the points to improve, which combined with the reflection time and personal goal setting made perfect sense for the participants and a really useful tool. We got a really motivated group that was ready to invoke change in themselves, their organizations and the people in their teams.
We know that this training was successful because we continued coaching some of the participants, and they have challenged and improved the ways of their organizations, they created new projects, some of them even started new organizations that they are managing also.
I was responsible for development of the program, adjusting it to the needs of the participants together with the other trainers, selection and preparation of the trainers, development of 1/4 of the workshops and their delivery, making sure that the goals of the training are achieved. I also wanted to challenge myself and the trainers team to the fullest so we can deliver all know-how that we have to the participants.