TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Ilona Olehlova
The main aim of the training course was to develop the participants understanding of volunteerism and voluntary as a tool of fighting social exclusion and discrimination. Moreover the training course aimed to strength participants understanding of EVS (European Voluntary Services) and their abilities to create EVS project that is meetings the needs of young people, especially of young people with fewer opportunities.
The training course connected youth workers, leaders coming from 12 countries including hosting Macedonia and follow by Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey.
The training course was based on non-formal education approach, strongly supporting active involvement of the participants by involving them in various kinds of activities including simulations, theatre based activities as role plays especially when focusing on the topic of social inclusion, work in mix-intercultural teams. The participants also took part in several problem solving and creative challenges and on regular base also in evaluation activities implemented with goal to reflect on learning process of the participants and adjust the activities to their needs and interests.
Among the outcomes of the training course it is possible to list strength partnership among partners organizations involved in the project as new project ideas especially for projects that can be implemented with support of Youth in Action Programme and which seeing volunteerism and voluntary work as a tool of social inclusion and overcoming unemployment especially among young people with fewer opportunities.
As a trainer I was fully responsible for preparation and implementation of the training activities including realization of the training sessions, evaluation activities implemented on the regular bases. I was also closely cooperating with other members of the project team – including support trainer and team of hosting organization in way to reach the project goals and meet the participants needs and interests.