TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Vladimir Kozachun
The main aims and objectives:
• to reveal the significance of communication, its nature, aspects (perceptive, communicative and interactive), kinds (verbal, non-verbal and visual), effectiveness and problems;
• to develop communicative competence and skills of participants, which are crucial and necessary for youth/social workers and trainers;
• to reveal the tight interrelation between problems in communication and emergence and escalation of conflicts;
• to link constructive communication with efficient conflict mediation, management and resolution;
• to determine and explore the nature of conflict, its types, reasons and ways to mediate, manage and resolve it;
• to develop conflict management and mediation skills;
• to create and develop new tools (we will focus on simulations and role-plays), aimed for the development of communication and conflict mediation, management and resolution;
• to develop self-reflection, awareness and other key competences of participants;
• to exchange experience and establish new partnerships with youth organizations from another countries.
The participants' profile of the TC:
• 18+ years old youth/social workers/leaders/NGO key staff;
• responsible, motivated and open to the new experience and learning opportunities;
• open-minded and flexible towards new knowledge, viewpoints and perspectives;
• with knowledge and experience in working with NFL programs (desirable, but not mandatory);
• ready to contribute to the project implementation: share relevant knowledge and experience, organize a workshop, lead a session, etc.;
• ready to implement the project results in further work;
• with good command of English.
The training involved 36 participants from 10 countries: Armenia, Czechia, Georgia, Germany, Jordan, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Ukraine.
For 7 days, 36 youth workers deeply dived into the topic, playing, discovering and assimilating our working methods suitable for small and large groups. The goal of this activity was to provide youth workers with an understanding of the significance of constructive communication and its importance in conflict management and peace building processes, to
develop their communication skills (both verbal and non-verbal), to explore the efficient conflict management strategies and principles, to equip youth workers with relevant methods and tools and to create the new ones all together.
The learning by doing approach ensured many interactive activities, mostly role-plays, simulations, performances and other theatrical techniques. We had long debrief sessions on all the elements of each method, ensuring a detailed understanding for all participants.
The project tackles the needs of participating organizations to develop theirs staff key competence and skill of communication as well as the needs of the communities and society for constructive and non-violent communication, general awareness rise, community development and peace building.
The main practical outcome of the project is presented by the newly created and designed toolkit (mostly focusing on simulations and role-plays), aimed to reveal the importance and significance of communication, to reveal the nature of conflict, to raise awareness, to develop communication and conflict management and mediation competences and skills.
This toolkit can be used in the follow-up projects, activities and initiatives by the direct participants and participating organizations but, as well, outside of participating organizations, being shared in a free access in social networks and other web-resources.
The direct participants developed their communicative key competence and skills and the participating organizations detected some of the main conflicts in their communities and outlined their solutions, based on the experience and toolkit, gained during the project.
Therefore, this project has a broad impact on the local, regional, national, European and international levels.
I was one of the full time Trainers responsible for the content.