TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Monia Izabela Dericks Wisniewska
Learning objectives for participants:
Update your knowledge on youth employability and entrepreneurship (trends, challenges, needs, ongoing and upcoming projects etc.);
Exchange experiences with the other trainers, as well as methods, tools and approaches;
Work on concrete case studies and bring solutions developed collaboratively;
Contribute to the development of new project ideas and tools;
Express your ideas, suggestions on areas that need to be explored further by the Youth@Work Strategic Partnership.
THE TEAM
Elin McCallum, UK, resident in Belgium
Konstantinos Stergiou, Greece
Monia Izabela Dericks Wiśniewska, Spain
Marga Veron Jarque, Spain (junior trainer)
PARTICIPANTS
The participants were all experienced trainers acquainted with European programs among them with the Erasmus+. The vast majority was highly motivated and eager to contribute and share ideas, knowledge and skills with others. They have participated in the debates, work groups, presentations and reflections. The promise of being able to give continuity to the Youth@Work partnership was a stimulating factor from personal and professional side.
They came from the following countries:
- Cyprus
- North Macedonia
- Armenia
- Belarus
- Egypt
- Palestine
- Jordan
- Malta
- Greece
- France
- Hungary
- Italia
- Spain
- UK
- Turkey
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
Additionally there were present the representatives of the Spanish NA (Octavio Martinez , Leticia Sánchez Palacín) and the representatives of the Madrid Community (Concha Fernández Iglesias y Victoria Castanys)
Programa / Programme
Four days of inspiration, learning and collaboration:
Day 1 – INTRO: Introducing and framing the TOTEE:
The first day was the introduction to the training, an opportunity to learn about the Youth@Work partnership and to meet other participants of the TOTEE.
Welcome & Getting to know each other
Aim: to help the participants to get to know each other and to feel more comfortable within the group. The session consisted in a series of ice-breaking games, such as: short presentations, tapes with names and cube speed dating.
Introduction into the Youth@Work Partnership
Aim: To give introduction to the training and Youth@Work strategic partnership
This sessions was divided in three parts:
Presentation of the training program, its schedule and sessions;
An overall description of the Youth@Work partnership and the reason to be, provided by Raluca;
Expectations of the participants towards the training and the Youth@Work partnership.
Day 2 – EXPLORE: The Future of Work:
That day we explored the trends, challenges and opportunities of employability and entrepreneurship in youth work. Providing concrete information, understanding the concepts/definitions, getting to know the EntreComp and Digcomp European frameworks for competences and developing a common understanding of the relevance and importance of these themes for youth work.
An expert speaker has been invited (Melissa Kennedy) to share the ideas and experience of the enterprise TeamLabs. She gave her vision on the future trends for the development of new jobs and competencies needed in the future.
Future trends in jobs
A short presentation on the future trend in jobs, provided by Melissa Kennedy from the Team Labs, during which Melissa gave a short resume of the latest developments of the labour market and how it will evolve in near future, what kind of competencies will be needed among young people to be able to face new labour market requirements and presentation of an innovative educational approach on young people education for the future – Campus for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Employability competencies vs Entrepreneurship competencies
Aim: to explore which competencies are related to the employability and the entrepreneurship, see what they have in common, to unify our understanding of those concepts and to reflect if the concepts are still the same when we work on those competencies with young people.
The participants have worked in small discussion groups (up to 6), half of the groups working on the concept of the employability, while the other half worked on the concept of the entrepreneurship. During the reflection each group was invited to visit a Gallery of Inspiration.
Once defined the competencies they were shared together and we had a common reflection of the outcomes.
As final dot of the reflection the groups were asked to create a common definition of both concepts and also to create a Word cloud by using related competencies.
EntreComp
A brief presentation of the European competencies frameworks: EntreComp and DigComp, its background, concept and structure and how they are related to the Youth@Work partnership objectives.
This content linked the understanding of competencies that define one capacity of being employable or being entrepreneurial, form the previous session and invited the participants to see the relevance of those frameworks in our work as trainers of Employability and Entrepreneurship.
10 reasons to work on E/E with youth
Aims:
To share and clarify the situation of youth work and youth employment and entrepreneurship of several European countries;
To create a common understanding of the importance of working on the E/E competencies with young people through non formal education context.
During the first half of the session, the participants in smaller groups had the opportunity to share their national contexts and realities related to youth work and employment. In the second half each group had presented their “Top10” of reasons why to work on E/E competencies with young people. What is the drive of the trainers and why is it important for young people.
Day 3 – LEARN: Reflecting on and Learning from Practice:
That day was all about reflecting on and learning from practice. Participants have worked in small groups to understand and analyse specific youth work case studies (identified from those sent in by participants). With interventions to develop understanding of relevant themes, they had considered how each case addresses the key areas associated with developing youth work supporting employability and entrepreneurship. Examples of themes to be considered included needs analysis, target group, competences mapping, collaboration with the wider ecosystem, evaluation of impact and added value.
Study cases
The participants were asked to send study cases prior to the training of good practices of projects or strategies. The trainers’ team has mapped all study cases and presented them in a resumed mode to the participants (flipcharts). The participant were able to get acquainted with all of them and were asked to choose three of them they would like to explore more deeply. With that we have been able to organise parallel workshops in two round, during which the chosen projects were explained in details and where the participants could make reflections, suggestions and to see how those project were relating to the Youth@Work partnership objectives.
Addressing Youth@Work challenges
Aim: to come up with ideas that can be put in practice through the Youth@Work partnership.
The participants were asked to come with ideas they think could align with the Youth@Work partnership objectives and to find teams to work them out in more detail. Work in groups.
Day 4 – CREATE: Ideas Lab:
The very last day we have spent on exploring new ideas and opportunities addressing the Youth@Work priorities. In small teams, participants went through an ideas-into-action development process to create and plan youth work projects, workshops or strategic initiatives, responding to the challenge presented by the Youth@Work partnership coordinator. This were followed by a user-centred design process and has concluded with a pitch from each team to the wider group.
Pitching ideas for the Youth@Work partnership
All the teams were invited to present their ideas from the previous session. They had three minutes to pitch their idea and there was seven minutes for questions and reflections. There have been presented nine ideas. The ideas has been written down by the team and are saved on the Google Drive. We have to mention that the proposed ideas are constructive and most of them are of interest for the Youth@Work partnership and its continuity. At the moment each group has been asked to draft their ideas in a more detailed way and to hand them over to the coordination staff.
Final evaluation and participants’ commitment
Aim: to wrap up the training, to provide last comments, Youthpass and commitment for the future.
Explanation on how the partnership was meant to function in the future and what is the expectation from the coordination, the National Agencies and SALTO-YOUTH centres towards the members of the Youth@Work Pool of Trainers.
After handing over the Youthpass certificates, the group had joined a group “ritual” to capture our wishes, expectations and commitment with the Youth@Work partnership and the Pool of Trainers.
Most remarkable comments/outcomes:
85,7% of the participants found the training useful for their professional life;
There was not enough time to get to know each other;
Over 60% of the participants liked the lecture over the future trends in jobs, but they missed time for reflection and debate. Also, quite few felt that the focus was too much centred on the market needs and that much on the society;
Everybody agreed on the importance of the EntreComp and DigComp session. For many of the participants the input was new;
With the study cases there was a suggestion to send them prior to the training, so people would have more time to get acquainted with them. (There is something to be said for, but personally I think that in reality only few of them would really go through them - Monia).
Addressing the challenges of the Y@W has been commented as important, interesting, good outcomes, stressful and too short to be able to gather good ideas. The comments on the following session for presentation of the ideas go in the same line. They were definitively most demanding sessions on the participants.
The trainers team has been evaluated generally in a positive way. The general feeling is that the trainers attitude was professional, that they did their best, they were convincing about the Y@W objectives for the future and that it wasn´t easy job to facilitate the TOTEE. The participants highlighted their availability and willingness, friendly attitude towards everyone and patience.
The time management has been poor.
Almost all participants are looking forward to the next steps and activities of the Y@W partnership.
Together with my co- trainers:
- Design of the training program
- Preparation of the content of the training sessions
- Preparation of the didactic material
- Preparation in situ of the space
- Implementation of the training
- Evaluation and conclusion for the future of the Youth@Work Pool of Trainers
Specific responsibility:
- Communication between the Spanish National Agency, the Youth@Work coordination and local authorities,
- Taking care for the Junior trainer Margarita Verdón
- Redaction of the final form