TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Irem Ebru Kuru
The aim of the project is to explore, learn and be the conscious about the harmful effects of smoking and create ways for coping with smoking problems of the young people and finding solutions and raising awareness about the issue by creating new projects to fight with smoking. The objectives of the training course as follows:
-To prepare new projects which will lead to lessen smoking addiction amoung the youngsters with the participation of young people and youth workers
-To increase the collaboration to fight against smoking addiction amoung the youngsters, youth workers and the institutions which work for young people in Europe
-To ensure the active participation of young people about disseminating the idea of living without smoking
-To make the youngsters and youth workers conscious about the harm of smoking
-To foster the tolerance and respect towards different cultures
-To disseminate the activities and studies of youth work in Erasmus + program
-To strengthen the European awareness amoung the youngsters by finding common solutions to the common problems
-To encourage the entrepreneurship skills of young people by giving them active roles
-To ensure intercultural learning amoung the youngsters by encouraging tolarance and collaboration against different cultures
In the training course, there were 3 participants (young people and youth workers) from each organisation from Croatia, Italy, UK, Latvia, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. In total there were 27 participants with different learning styles and backgrounds.
In the training, the methodology consists of a variety of strength-based and non-formal learning exercises and techniques, such as group work, study visit, role-playing, simulations, brainstorming, debriefing that are used to introduce and analyse the different contents. In order to fight against smoking addiction, we referred the 5As tool, which is also used by the health experts. 5As tool is combined of steps to define the addiction and to find out the level of the smoker and generate guidence activities. 5As are Ask, Advice, Assess, Assist ve Arrange. After giving the definitions of these verbs in the smoking context, the participants were divided into 5 groups to work on their own steps. When we define the smoker at one of these steps of his/her addiction, the participants were asked to organize an action plan to overcome smoker's addiction problems. Then they presented their action plan to the others. They were asked questions by the other participants about the feasibility and effectiveness of their action plan. At the end of the session, debriefing method is used and they were asked if it was a real life scenario, would it be really easy to fight against smoking, if 5As is a really working method which can be used anywhere in the world, would it be easy to be used in their countries, if the addicted person was their best friend or one of the people in the family, would you use this method or would you use some other methods.
In the NGO fair, I used a different method. Participants were asked to come to the beach of the hotel. The buckets and shovels for children to be played at the beach were given to the participants to present their NGOs by making sand castles at the beach. At the end of the activity, the participants expressed the function, structure and working areas of their NGOs with the sand castle theme. This activity gave them a fresh air outside of the plenary and helped them to express themselves with the different childhood challenge as an art.
Participants were able to fight against smoking problem of the people as an individual and a youth worker with the right tools. They saw the policies of the countries in this issue and able to compare and contrast with theirs. They were presented other tools which are used in the secondary schools. The Erasmus + program was introduced and project management in Key Actions were presented. They created their own project during the training and feedback was given to them. They are now able to know how to start and manage their own project under the Erasmus + program.
I was the only one trainer in the training with two staff who were dealing with the practicalities and the other equipment issues. There were also two experts from the health field who gave the participants lecture in this issue. I was the one who was in charge of the sessions, and methods and techniques which will be used in the training for the participants who have different learning styles.