TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Jessica Reinsch
The project aimed to introduce upcycling as a tool for empowering entrepreneurial mindset of young people by giving them the opportunity to apply practical skills related to sustainable development in an intercultural environment.
Objectives:
• to stimulate the sense of initiative of the participants, to boost their creativity and to improve their entrepreneurial skills by giving new life to discarded materials and by getting in touch with a local Makerspace called "Restlos"
• to spread the idea of upcycling as a tool to foster reuse and recycle, thus reducing the environmental impact, by providing several Upcycling and DIY sessions and preparing and performing on a small public music festival with self made music instruments
• to address environmental awareness and importance of participants and local people in promoting a sustainable way of life
30 participants including trainers team from five countries have been involed in this activity: Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland and Estonia.
The target group:
• people active in the field of youth work
• people with an interest in hands-on activities, practical skills, upcycling and sustainability
• people who have graduated in secondary and vocational schools
The project used non-formal education methods and was desdigned as a follow-up project from "Upcycle your life" which was held one year before in Tallinn, Estonia.
• Preparation: bringing experienced and new participants together via social media and involving some of the former participants in the APV and programme planning process
• Implementation: first two days have been reserved for getting to know each other/reunion, expectation exchange and teambuilding; followed by diving into the topic, visiting a local Makerspace, brainstorming on creative upcycling projects, building groups and hands-on activities to build new lamps from discarded materials, the last days have been used for result presentation, live performance and dissemination on a local music festival followed by a final evaluation.
• follow-up: participants continued to share topic-related inputs in a social media group, met local stakeholders and started their own upcycling projects
Participants got familiar with the concepts of Upcycling, including technological upcycling. They visited a local Makerspace and had the chance to came up their own projects while working in small groups. Outcomes were upcycled music instruments e.g. a guitar made out of a chessboard with which "Seven Nation Army" was played on the music festival. The results became visible to the public when the group performed on two evenings in a row on a little local music festival with their selfmade instruments.
Designing the programme together with the co-trainers. Writing and handing in the project application at the German NA. Being host. Giving sessions, facilitating getting to know each other and teambuilding activities, energizers, warm-ups and reflection and evaluation session.