TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Corina Pintea
Volu.M.E. - VOLUNTEER MANAGEMENT ENHANCED - deeper into issues - dealt with Volunteering, Youth participation, International Volunteer Management and Mentoring.
It included one Training Course & one Seminar, both focused on offering an experience in the Volunteer management process to persons in organization which already have at least ONE experience as international EVS / ESC hosting organisation.
The 2 learning activities aimed at developing competencies of youth workers and organisations in the processes of volunteer management and mentoring of European volunteers. The purpose was to enhance the quality of EVS & ESC volunteering projects as learning experiences in all levels - from the writing of a project right through the closing and evaluation.
We targeted EVS / ESC coordinators or Mentors or former volunteers (practitioners already involved in EVS / ESC projects) and the selected participants came from Poland, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, Cyprus, Slovenia, Romania.
Non-formal learning methodology was intensively used during the training, making use of both individual and group methods, facilitated by trainers and taking into consideration participants’ learning needs with a creative and participative approach (working with play dough, role-plays, small groups, simulations, introspection). Sessions were designed using experiential learning methods directly involving participants, their skills, previous experience, interests and potential for growth. Moreover, since the second activity happened online, there were tutorials focusing on learning how to use new online tools that could be practical and useful
The training dove into quality elements related to volunteer management and mentoring, offering a systemic approach to the management of European volunteers (9 step process).
It allowed participants to go very deep in the topics, because of the way the project was set up - 2 learning activities linked by a period of remote work in thematic work groups, focusing on elements of interest from those explored in the first training. In the seconf activity, participant had as a common task to plan, organize and implement an online dissemination event, presenting the results of their own work in between the 2 learning activities.
Yiannis Yiannakis, the Commissioner for Volunteerism and Non-Governmental Organizations in Cyprus took part in the online event, which was brilliantly orchestrated by the group of participants, who independently planned the content, the structure, the facilitation of simultaneous workshops for an international audience. All done online, despite of the challenging times and conditions.
I was a full-time trainer anc co-designer of the concept (with my colleagues from Germany and Cyprus), involved both in the preparation of the trainings (topic, design of activities, flow, as well as organizational and administrative preparation) and the evaluation of the training and the entire project. At the same time, during the remote work period, I coached 3 of the teams that were working on specific topics of their choice (from the larger theme of Volunteer Management), so they could create a concrete material to share with the audience and their colleagues (some created brochures, other created facilitation methods).