TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Paul Kloosterman
The Training of Trainers for European Youth Projects a long-term training course developing the compentences of trainers to act within the European YOUTH programmes.The course exists of three residential seminars and an online educational platform. As part of the course participants have to design, implement and evaluate an international training project.
The major aim of this training course is to train trainers who have the competences and the motivation to contribute to the improvement of the quality of projects within the Youth in Action Programme of the European Union.
Specific objectives with respect to the trainees of the training course are to further develop and improve the following competencies of participants:
• The competence to design and implement national and international training activities for youth workers and other actors involved in the development and implementation of projects within the European Youth in Action Programme
• The competence to co-operate in international teams of trainers/facilitators;
• The competence to use and adapt existing training concepts and methods and possibly to design new ones;
• Increasing the understanding of the educational context (i.e. Non-Formal Education, Life-Long Learning, European Citizenship) in which this training course is placed.
• The competence to include the concept of European Citizenship into training activities according to the needs of the learners;
• The competence to deal with ambiguity and crisis;
• Intercultural competence;
• Developing the essential trainers skills and values when focusing on Facilitation and Supporting Individuals as well as Learning in a group.
• Developing the competence to direct ones own learning
Target group: trainers who want to further develop their competences in European youth work. 24 participants from 15 different countries and a team of three coming from 3 different countries.
The methodology of the course is based on self-directed and experiential learning - participants are supported in developing their own path of learning and development throughout the course.
At the 1st seminar the are focus is on self-directed learning and raising awareness the own learning process.
Participants have to develop and implement a practice training project as part of the course. During the 2nd seminar the attention is much more on 'practice'; designing training, training skills etc. Participants have the opportunity to run sessions and to get feedback from peers and trainers.
Between seminar 2 and 3 the so-called practice training projects take place.
In the third seminar participants take stock of their learning process, evaluate the outcomes and plan future steps.
During the one year course all participants have one member of the trainers team as their mentor with whom they have minimum 7 mentor talks.
The online learning is a continuous process going on for the whole duration of the course.
Participants develop their capacities as trainers and self-directed learners. Many participants of the course, that is now in it's 11th edition, work as trainers on European level and /or in national trainer pools of the NAs of the Youth in Action programme.
roles in the course:
trainer
mentor
moderator of the online part of the course