TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Daniel John Carter
Based on the report on volunteering in EU “there are around 92 to 94 million adults involved in volunteering in Europe. This in turn implies that around 22% to 23% of Europeans aged over 15 years are engaged in voluntary activities”. (http://ec.europa.eu/citizenship/pdf/doc1018_en.pdf).
Youth in Action and previous Youth programs (as well as other mobility and participation programs) contributed to this increased number of projects and young people as active participants in the society (through increased accessibility). One downside of this situation is lack of proper monitoring of the quality of learning processes and adequate facilitation of the process young people are passing through.
Based on years of experience in the youth field, the project team identified a crucial need to increase the level of quality and impact on young people by upgrading the competencies of youth workers in experiential learning. These competencies could be applied in the educational field, but also in their projects and direct work with the volunteers. Important topics, such as: intercultural, global, human rights education: theatre: street methods for community interventions etc. are relying on facilitating experiential learning process. Often the importance of this process if overseen or done superficially and many young people are losing a lot of learning outcomes.
The aim of this project was to increase the quality of youth work by equipping youth workers (coordinators, facilitators, mentors) with competencies in facilitating experiential learning.
The project was based on an intensive experiential learning process to reach following objectives:
- To increase the knowledge in experiential learning (theory, concepts, steps, philosophy);
- To increase the practical facilitation skills in experiential learning cycle (in various settings-beyond workshop context):
- To develop practical skills in designing and implementing experiential learning activities.
Educational team was composed of 3 trainers (from all corners of Europe) with more than 10 years of experience in youth work field, training youth workers and trainers across Europe and experiential learning.
Target group and criteria of the 26 participants:
Youth workers /coordinators/facilitators/ trainers that:
- were currently working directly with young people in various settings (project, workshops, camps, campaigns, etc.)
- expressed a need to upgrade their competencies in designing and facilitating experiential learning processes;
- had experience in facilitating learning for young people (could be an advantage);
- had at least medium level of English (to be able to participate in discussion and in
training activities);
- were resident of one of following countries: Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo,
Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Italy, UK, Poland, Estonia, Spain.
During the training course participants’ personal and professional competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) as youth workers and facilitators of experiential learning were challenged and upgraded. The training was highly practical and was based on experiential learning process and on increasing the impact and transfer (in their work and communities).
- The particpants created a number of different experiencial workshops with different methods of reflection, conceptualization and future implementation developed to follow.
- The particpants gained a deeper understanding of Kolb's (1974) experiencial learning cycle.
- The particpants gained deeper undestanding of a number different theories of education and thinking including the different coloured thinking hats, head-hand-heart and learning zones.
- Particpants netowrked to create future experiencial learning based activities for young people in future.
As the youngest trainer still most activiely working with young people, especial those aged 13 - 18 years of aged my responsibility as a trainer was to the related the theory and best practice to the realities that challenge us in practical input of youth work.
I was also in charge of instigating a number of the outdoor based experiencial workshops.