TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Joakim Arnøy
The training aimed to develop youth workers' communication competences to better support young people in communication and critical thinking. The training focused on words, stories, and techniques that shape public opinion, the reach of mass media and social media, and what constructive communication entails.
The target group was youth workers and other educators working with young people. In the end we had 22 participants coming from Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Germany, Hungary, Northern Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.
The team consisted of trainers from Poland, Italy and Hungary, plus myself.
We ran team building activities, brainstormings, a detailed simulation exercise, staging a referendum, playful mock debates, buzz groups analysing film footage and arguments, fish bowl discussions, and some input, among other things.
The training was part of the SALTO Training of Trainers cycle, as the practice project of 4 ToT participants. So this training achieved the objective of providing hands-on experience for all trainers in running a full project cycle, from conceiving the idea to implementation, and evaluation.
The training itself received good feedback from its participants. 80% of the participants stated that the training met their expectations to a level of 5 or 6 on a scale from 1-6.
In the months after the training, we were also informed by some of the participants that they had replicated some of the exercises we developed for this training, including the simulation.
My task, alongside my 3 co-trainers, was to develop, plan, implement and evaluate the training, and its whole cycle. Facilitation of the training was split four-ways.