TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Agnes Berecz
This project is developed to integrate Peace Education in youth work, by training youth workers to become peace educators/trainers, over a period of ten months, combining virtual and in-person meetings.
The aim of the ToT is to increase the peacebuilding capacity of each organization participating in this project, by empowering youth workers with peacebuilding skills, as well as facilitation and organizational skills, to implement peace education.
The objectives are to empower youth workers by:
- enhancing their skills to work on inner peace, enabling them to support the youth in a peaceful manner, and assist them with their mental health;
- developing their skills to work on peace on the interpersonal level, enabling them to de-escalate conflicts, mediate and resolve them in their youth groups and create peaceful group dynamics;
- motivating and empowering them to work on peace on the societal-cultural and planetary level, enabling them to stimulate active citizenship in youth and implement nonviolent awareness raising campaigns promoting the areas of a culture of peace;
- improving their facilitation skills, so that they can effectively deliver peace education content to youth;
- creating a network of youth workers who are motivated to work with peace education and can support each other to do so, cooperate and exchange best practices.
Composition of the Team:
Nina Koevoets, The Netherlands
Ági Berecz, Hungary
Composition of participants' group:
20 people from Hungary, Spain, Greece, The Netherlands, Italy, Serbia
During this training course we used mainly experimental learning methods, based on groupwork, role plays and somatic excercises.
Some of the sessions included:
- Opening. Introductions. Mapping expectations
- Group Agreement & Active Listening
- Peace Please & Sociocracy
- Sharing Circles
- Peaceful Warriors Ritual
- Self-care and personal boundaries
- Emotional Resilience
- Introduction to Nonviolent Communication
- The Two Hands of nonviolence and Conflict Styles
- Conflict Styles NVC role-play
- Restorative Justice
- Privilege walk
- De-escalation of conflicts
- Facilitation Skills 1. - the basics
- Facilitation Skills 2.
- Exchange of best practices in Conflict resolution and peace building
- Group research "Peace Journalism"
- Calling and Resources
- Dissemination of project results
- Evaluation of the program: 1. Youthpass evaluation, 2. verbal evaluation 3. written evaluation and self-assessment.
One example of the sessions I designed and lead:
outdoors
Short check-in - pairs + input four levels of sharing 15'. (Ági theory)
1. Intro to the topic of today - personal boundaries, how it relates to peace, and theoretical background (Tara Brach and Christine Neuff - ) 10' + self care = self compassion maybe we can include something short here
2. Personal boundaries excercise in pairs, somatic, non-verbal and verbal + sharing 25'
In small groups identify challenges to communicate personal boundaries and the benefits to do so. Brainstorm strategies to overcome or deal with the challenges.25'
3. Closing in plenary 15'.
The activity is embedded in an 8-months blended learning journey, where we hold 5 online webinars in between two residential training courses, in September-October, 2025 and in April, 2026.
After the first residential training course we conducted an evaluation among the participants. Here are some of the comments they made:
- My top was the space and the opportunity we had to connect with nature. A great selection of people participating in the program, exposure to different cultures, personal stories, and experiences.
- My top would be that the visual ways of learning the information
- Great location, stimulating and empowering topics, different tools
- It was very useful to learn the NVC method featuring feelings and needs. It is practical and effective, and as a participant it was great to have an opportunity during the training to practice it on examples of my own, personal conflicts. The selection of the group participants was excellent - a broad group of open and curious people, from various countries and experiences, and of different ages. I had plenty of opportunity to engage and connect, as well as to learn from their experiences. The food was amazing, and an important underlying part of the group’s bonding and connection. The workshop main space, as well as the green space outside, was very well-suited to openness and learning.
-the content and planning of the sessions and the connection with the team, i really enjoyed the fact that many different generations of people we managed to collaborate, exchange experiences-knowledge and care for each other.
https://peace-power.org/outcomes-updates/
I co-designed and co-facilitated the 6 days training course with Nina Koevoets (Peace Power, The Netherlands), who is the main host and funder of the programme.
Agi proved to be a reliable and experienced trainer to work with.