TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Dimitris Georgiadis
The purpose of the training was to strengthen the participation of young people throughout the process of a youth exchange, with an emphasis on the planning stage of the activity. Objectives of the training were:
To offer information about the aims, values, characteristics and actions of the Erasmus+/Youth programme and in particular the action of youth exchanges.
To offer space and support for participants to exchange their backgrounds, experiences, and expectations relevant to youth participation and training design.
To familiarize participants with the project cycle learning, the problems may arise and communication and intercultural management.
To enable group-buildings through sharing of plans and ideas for future youth in action activities.
To provide guidelines for a youth exchange design and get participants acquainted with this, find resources, and partners.
To explore possibilities for better inclusion and active participation of young people in a training and in youth exchanges.
To enable participants to understand the principles and values of a youth group and how young people can participate in planning a youth exchange in general.
To recognize the learning outcomes of a youth exchange.
Participants were people who are coming from 20 municipalities of Greece. 18 females 9 males
Municipal employees, mayors and vice mayors for youth
The seminar has been designed based on a methodology which combines theory and non formal activities, but in more targeted way.
Participants are coming from municipal level with different backgrounds and interests. Most of them they have the interest and intention to work with the youth programmes and to encage young people in policy making, but they have very limit understanding of how they will do that and especially the use of non formal education methods. The programme has been created based on that, but the trainers has left plenty of time to adopt the reality and the needs of the participants.
During the seminar, the participants had the chance to meet each other’s, to understand their needs and to analyses their role and where they stand as well as to exchange realities within their colleagues from other municipalities. It has been presented to them the theory of competences and has been analyzed through the scope of Youth pass and the two programmes of Europe Goes Local and Democracy reloaded. For three of these approaches a verity of methods has been uses such as “swan the sheep” a method that the trainers are using to the ESC training courses and the method of world café.
During the seminar mr Alexiadis has presented the opportunities from the Erasmus+ and ESC programmes for the youth of their municipalities and a series of good practices around Greece and Europe has been presented as well in order to inspire them and to be used as fruit of thought.
By the end of the training the participants had the chance to work on more personal level and to see what they have to do and by extension their municipality in order to build the process of how to involve young people in the decision making level and to involve the idea of youth working in their daily life.
At the end an non formal and formal evaluation has been given to participants in order to see how the seminar achieved its goals.
The evaluation part of the course consisted of two evaluation processes; the daily and the final one. 99% of the participants responded in the evaluation questionnaire. The daily evaluation was referring to the sessions that were just finished. These evaluations were oral (small feedback) or with non-formal way (bubble tree, timeline etc.) and they were conducted in the plenary. We received mostly positive reactions and a great interest to discuss further and in depth the selected topics of the sessions. Besides that, at the end of the course, there was a session of self-evaluation, a session of official evaluation (form of a structured questionnaire; and a session of unofficial evaluation of the course.
We managed to go very deep in understanding of team building and co working as well as on how to understand the youth work and the use of Erasmus+ in the process of youth participation. We suggest to have a series of training courses during the year under the same topic and to create new teams of people who will work seriously on the field. For those people who are not able to join a physical training then we recommend to have the option of an online training course. The feelings were positive from all sides and for the whole duration of the course. We collected lots of positive daily feedback which inspired us to be more effective as listeners and as trainers. Finally, there was excellent cooperation among the trainers and between trainers and participants. The graphs below show the level of achievement of the course’s objectives.
We can generally conclude that the seminar has been successful. The programme was followed as planned, except minor changes that had to take place due to participants’ needs and development of the group dynamic. The dynamics between the trainers, the trainers and the organizers, and both with the participants developed smoothly and effectively offering a space and an environment that were based on mutual support and safety to express new ideas and experiences. The seminar could be repeated, following the same structure and content since its effectiveness and impact is proven.
Junior trainer
Contribution to drafting the programme of the training course
Presentation of Participatory budget for youth
Evaluation
Reporting
Assisting the senior trainer and the representative of the Hellenic National Agency for Erasmus+ Youth
Our cooperation with Mr. Georgiadis throughout the planning and implementation of the training was smooth.
In addition, Mr. Georgiadis was formal and on time with regard to document procedures (contracts, tickets, etc.).
During the training, Mr. Georgiadis carried out his tasks and responsibilities successfully. His professional experience regarding working and cooperating with municipalities had a positive impact on the participants, who were mainly municipal employees, mayors/deputy mayors, and youth workers.