TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Roberto Rossetto
The training activity aimed to strengthen the communication capacity of youth organisations and youth workers by developing competences in strategic communication, podcasting, storytelling, content design, channel selection, and impact measurement. It addressed a concrete need identified by the partners: many youth and third-sector organisations have strong values and meaningful activities, but struggle to communicate them effectively because they lack specific communication skills and tools. In this sense, the training responded both to an operational need, improving outreach and visibility, and to an educational need, helping youth workers use communication more consciously as a tool for empowerment, inclusion, and participation.
The activity fit the goals of the organisations because the partnership is composed of youth organisations working on youth empowerment, participation, innovation, and non-formal education, and all of them could benefit from becoming more effective in communicating with young people and broader communities. For APG in particular, the training was coherent with its mission of strengthening youth work quality, promoting participation, and developing innovative educational practices and tools for the youth sector.
The target group consisted mainly of youth workers, youth activists, and communication-oriented professionals involved in youth and third-sector organisations. The activity was designed for people who already work with young people or support youth organisations and who needed stronger competences in communication, podcast production, and the strategic use of media in youth work.
The training was clearly international. The partnership involved organisations from Italy, Estonia, Romania, Serbia, Greece, Hungary, Albania, and Slovenia, alongside the Italian applicant APG. This gave the activity a strongly transnational character and ensured intercultural exchange, peer learning, and the sharing of practices from different national contexts. The application also highlights the intention to build a stable European network of cooperation among the partner organisations through the project.
The training was based on non-formal learning methods. The application describes a methodology centred on practical learning, exchange of good practices, collaborative production, and hands-on experimentation with communication tools. Participants were expected not only to receive input, but to actively create communication content, test podcasting techniques, work on storytelling, reflect on audience targeting, and explore how to measure the impact of communication activities.
Examples of methods used include experiential workshops on strategic communication, group work on message development, peer-learning between participants from different organisations, practical exercises in audio content creation, and the collective recording of a “meta-podcast” documenting the podcast-production process itself. This made the learning highly participatory and practice-based, in line with the non-formal education approach typical of Erasmus+ youth worker mobility projects.
Improved competences of participants in podcast creation, storytelling, strategic communication, social media use, and communication impact assessment; stronger capacity of partner organisations to communicate their values and activities; the creation of a transnational network for ongoing cooperation; the production of reusable educational resources, especially the “meta-podcast” and related training materials.
Link to the meta-podcast:
https://www.promozionegiovani.it/vibe-visionary-interactive-broadcasting-for-empowerment/
Responsible for the coordination of the training team and in charge of delivering the programme together with Danilo Liguori.