TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Robbie Stakelum
The training brought together frontline workers from ILGA-Europe & FEANTSA's membership together to explore how both sectors could partner to support the needs of vulnerable and marginalised LGBTIQ youth living in poverty and homelessness.
Each organisation had expertise respectively on LGBTIQ identity & the causes and solutions of homelessness. But with roughly 20-40% of young people experiencing homelessness identifying as LGBTIQ, there has been a gap between these services which resulted in LGBTIQ youth becoming homelessness.
The purpose of this training was to share the expertise of both sectors, identify common ground, how they can partner together and deliver win-wins whereby they can better support the needs of LGBTIQ youth.
This training involved frontline social workers in the homeless sector and activists from the LGBTIQ sector. Those coming from the homeless sector knew little about equality, diversity & human rights. Those coming from the LGBTIQ sector has little understanding of socio-economic inequalities and poverty. Participants came from 20 different countries across the Council of Europe.
Over the week many activities were used to create an engaging environment using non-formal education these included.
Role Plays:
Incorporating the expertise of both sectors, we designed a role play that brought a young person through the coming out process that triggered an experience of homelessness and gave insights into how homeless services weren't adequately prepared to support a young person. Both sectors learned how a young person navigates the system, and what their respective roles should be to support young LGBTIQ people in this situation. We debriefed with participants about what should be different, this then fed into a later session on next steps, identifying how both sectors need to make this shift.
Peer Led Learning for Terminologies:
Rather than simply present an overview of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Gender Expression, we broke participants into small groups. In smaller groups they each had to discuss these terms and then discuss terminologies like pansexual, trans, gender fluid, asexual etc and suggest where they would place them. For homeless services this was aimed at developing their competency of LGBTIQ terminologies.
Take a Step Forward:
To help LGBTIQ activists better understand socio-economic inequalities and how the right to housing intersects with social inclusion (education, health, employment, friendships etc) we gave each participant a 'role', where they had to take a step forward if they achieved a milestone, such a second level or third level education, bought a home. The roles included single mom, child of a politician, nurse etc, and aimed to show how inequalities exist across society and can act as an invisible barrier to social inclusion.
The training resulted in both sectors better understanding their respective roles in supporting LGBTIQ youth at risk of homelessness which included:
- A video calling for greater collaboration between both sectors to mark international human rights day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88lRMJWoIsM
- On the back of this study session FEANTSA surveyed its members to better understand obstacles to serving LGBTIQ youth (ILGA Europe is currently surveying their members to understand how they can improve support around homelessness due to be published soon):
https://www.feantsa.org/en/report/2020/10/26/perceptions-findings-from-a-european-survey-of-homelessness-service-providers-about-lgbtiq-youth-homelessness
FEANTSA & ILGA Europe members worked together to lobby the Fundamental Rights Agency, leading to the first European data on LGBTIQ homelessness in their Quality of Life Survey for the LGBTI Community in 2020.
FEANTSA has started an online training programme for homeless services to become more inclusive of LGBTIQ needs.
I was the Course Director (lead trainer) and responsible for setting the learning goals, delivering the training, achieving outcomes for this training and submitting the official training report to the Council of Europe Youth Department.
I recruited a 5 member prep team. I prepared and facilitated our preparatory meetings in an interactive and engaging manner to build a strong team relationship, ensuring as trainers we had a strong bond, good communication skills and able to work well together. During these preparatory meetings I was also responsible for translating our training goals into core modules for the 5 day training.
Between the prep meeting of trainers and the training itself I worked with each trainer to support the development of their session outlines. I supported the integration of the training methods mentioned in the above related question.
During the week of the training I was responsible for delivering the training. Throughout each day I would introduce my sessions and outline the activities. I also supported other trainers with their sessions. With 5 trainers and 5 days for the training each trainer was appointed chair of the day. On my given day as chair of the day, I was responsible for introducing the day and the learning aims, review the previous days core learning and manage the timing and sequence for the day.
Additionally at the end of each day every trainer, myself included, met with a small group of the participants. This allowed us to assess the progress of participants and measure whether the training was going too slow or too fast. Each evening I would then meet with my co-trainers and review the following day. This enabled us to tailor the training to the specific needs of the participants, and keep learning relevant.
Additional roles and responsibilities included:
With the support of the prep team I designed the call for applicants, designed the application and evaluation system and worked with the prep team to select the participants and managed the logistics and admin.
As Course Director I was also responsible for intervening in emergencies, such as when a speaker couldn't attend, or where conflict arose in the prep team.