TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Juhász Zsuzsanna
Historically, the Visegrad countries have always been facing similar challenges that developed a common V4 identity within the four member states. The seminar aimed to inspire/promote the development of future projects among participants from V4 countries.
The specific objectives of this seminar were these:
to bring together young people and youth workers from V4 countries with the aim of developing common projects in the future;
to share the latest research outcomes concerning V4 youth and to identify challenges V4 youth are facing;
to offer a networking opportunity between the participants and their sending organizations;
to provide opportunities and space for participants to share good practices, innovative approaches, concepts and activities;
to offer an introduction to the Erasmus+ Programme and its opportunities.
Representatives of 3 national agencies were present - Peter Kupec from Slovakian NA Iuventa, Magda Paszkowszka from Polish NA and Dora Csoka and Agnes Horvath from the Hungarian NA. The facilitators were Bara Blahova from the Czech Republic and Zsuzsa Juhasz from Hungary.
Experiential learning method helps participants to open up, to experiment freely and to understand their learning process, to guide and lead their personal/group learning with the experiences gained. It helps the group to experience strong group sense with small problem-solving activities and with games for getting to know each other (as a person, as a youth worker) in a deeper way. This way of “meeting others” can be a good future base for networking where possible friendships and the quality of personal connections play a big role. Experiential learning gives freshness and aliveness in meetings where we use our brain a lot, thus we can get our bodies into movement that inspires our thoughts and creativity as well. It also creates a good frame/structure for sharing best practices or discuss topics where many participants are involved but time is limited to effective use. If the facility allows we wish to use different places to facilitate learning process: parks, forest areas, indoor rooms etc.
Using art as good tool for expression helps participants to express themselves in a creative and effective way, to stay focused and inspired for the whole 5 days. Using small ceremonies to frame the days and to strengthen group-sense, creates a very friendly and open atmosphere where participants can share the challenges they might face. Using verbal and non-verbal activities and games that connecting strongly to the topics of the agenda can color and enlighten the understanding the goals/objectives and ensure the high impact of the topics to be discussed and the outputs to be delivered. Nevertheless according our experiences to approach youth is one of the best tool to use dance, music and any kind of performing techniques as this is the field where they are usually very talented so we can strengthen their self-esteem very much.
Solution focused coaching helps the facilitation process to stay focused and keep the steps and flow of the agenda. Coaching supports to work in big/small groups with certain topics (good practices sharing, new and innovative approaches, networking) and to facilitate the best output in a light, creative and playful way. Coaching helps participants in being able to create a connection easily between general level (European values, output of researches) and a more specific level of thinking and acting (national initiatives, local youth work and Roma inclusion projects). Solution focused coaching develops the sense of positive attitude and analyzing projects and concepts in a way “how does it work well?” “how is it useful for me or for my youngsters/organization/network?” it deliberates hidden resources and enables long-lasting inspiration and motivation for youth work. The method helps raising questions that can act as mile-stones for future working projects.
Participants understood the opportunities and the need of youth work development of V4 region. Experts gave a nice frame of historical background thus good base for future project work. Participants started to plan youth exchanges and youth initiatives amongst their new V4 partners.
Final report can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/138ZO07ajRzis_Jn-0kMd0hHUZ289jSuOYMrF_bYOWj8/edit?usp=sharing
My task was to co-create the training with my trainer partner and with the NA officers.
I created a design with colorful outdoor activities and SF coaching process thus the topic was more digestable. I put an emphasis on moving and learning while moving.