TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Christina Demetriades
AIM
The aim of the course is to introduce social inclusion as a necessary aspect of community development and to empower youth workers to become effective leaders in their communities, and also to increase their understanding and application of anti-discriminatory and inclusive practices.
OBJECTIVES
• To raise awareness about what social inclusion is.
• To raise awareness about positive changes we can make on a personal level so that we can be more inclusive on the collective level. E.g. Consider how our daily life practices can be conducive to inclusion, or not.
• To support youth workers in becoming leaders in their communities while being inclusive – where inclusion is seen as progress in view of radicalization as a negative consequence of a globalized world.
• To provide practical tools to be used by participants in their communities when working with social inclusion and community leadership.
The team is composed of 4 trainers from 4 countries: Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Cyprus (myself).
We have participants from a variety of countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Norway.
PARTICIPANTS’ PROFILE
Youth workers, youth leaders, social workers, or volunteers actively taking part in their local community through projects or social actions which involve young people.
Young people who want to become active agents in their communities by leading projects or social actions.
Community organisations' leaders/employees who want to enhance their skills in leading their projects.
Participants are able to use English as working language.
In this training course, participants discovered and work on their skills and how they can use them to work in their community. The program is based on:
Experiencing: improvisation and outdoor activities as tools for community leadership. We explored applied improvisation and outdoors as tools for willingness to take responsibility, taking a risk, sense of initiative, discovering one’s own limits, working with mistakes and other essential skills for effective communication.
Reflecting: on the own/European reality, on the methods used, on the personal learning process.
Transferring: to the own reality of participants and exploring the possibilities in the Erasmus+ Program to work towards social inclusion.
Participants gained awareness about local realities regarding youth work and community work. They also gained awareness about what social inclusion is and they shared challenges to social inclusion faced in their own realities and work. They also gained awareness about what leadership and specifically community leadership. The 'pieces of the puzzle' was drawn together with the profile of the 'inclusive community leader', where they analysed what knowledge, skills and competences an inclusive community leader has. They learnt through a variety of indoor and outdoor exercises, including improvisation. They left with a deeper self-awareness about their own abilities, knowledge, skills, talents, attitudes and the team roles they are best suited for and most comfortable with. They also gained theoretical knowledge about Intersectionality and Belbin's theory of team work. They also left with an Action plan to carry out back home, applying all that they learnt, whether in collaboration with other participants or individually in their own work context - hence individual, national and international action plans.
All 4 Trainers, including myself, had the responsibilities of designing the training course, organizing an appropriate venue, final selection of participants, delivering training sessions whilst maintaining the flow of the programme and the balance between personal and group time, evaluating the training course and producing a final report.