TOY - Trainers Online for Youth
This is a reference for Elena A. Russo
The ambitious goal of ANOTHER TOMORROW YE was to make participants aware of their lifestyle and human impact on the planet, focusing on available solutions for changing their impact on Earth into a more sustainable one. During the YE, we achieved this by increasing:
1 The awareness of the consequences of own actions (i.e. through a lifestyle test outlining its impact on nature; shared good practices of sustainable lifestyle and asked participants to commit in daily sustainable actions during groupworks);
2 The consciousness of world-wide situation on environmental issues and (going on or desirable) strategies to solve such issues (i.e. informative workshop on the overconsumption of plastic, cinematographic forum, panel on energetically self-sufficiency, role game on decision making on a political level, etc.);
3 The feeling of having the power of ‘making a change’ among participants, by stressing activities on solutions more than on problems and making them aware of the impact they have by small (or bigger) changes to apply in their daily life (i.e. becoming an activist, using less plastic, reducing the consumption of goods, buying fair-trade and eco-friendly items, etc.).
In addition, we had a set of specific interrelated objectives to pursue, and we stimulated participants to:
4 Become more eco-responsible in their daily practices and have a less harmful impact on environment; we did it thanks to specific activities, examples and reflections (i.e. group works included good practices of household, proper recycling, water saving, electricity saving; we watched the documentaries ‘Bag it’, ‘The True Cost’ and ‘Tomorrow’). Most of participants proved a very high motivation and commitment for this, embodying the good practices proposed immediately, while others needed more time. We over-exceeded our expectations, when some participants got enlighten by the idea of adopting a more eco-friendly lifestyle (i.e. one girl promised to buy clothes only in second hand shops, a boy to stop going to fast food restaurants).
5 Collaborate together, beyond and thanks to their personal, cultural, political, educational and social diversity through educational workshops on environmental sensitivity (i.e. the role game ‘Banning plastic bags from Belvedere town’, the ‘living library’ on hot environmental topics related to participants’ home countries) as well on teambuilding (i.e. ‘Tuk-tuk’, ‘Discovery walk’, ‘Secret friend’, ‘Spider ring’ methods, etc.) and intercultural exchange (i.e. intercultural dinners and evenings, coffee breaks, etc.). The framework was living in a community for 10 days, sharing tasks (i.e. group works: like washing dishes and storing the garbage), respecting each other (i.e. social agreement). This grew participants’ attitudes to be active members of a communities, which supports them in being active citizens in their national reality as well as in the European Union and the Planet as a whole. Our expectations were a higher than the effective results, in fact, the few participants who had several communication problems because of English barrier were strongly supported by their mates and groupworks were always fulfilled when normally they need a higher supervision from the staff. Some participants wanted to contribute to the YE and carried out extra-activities.
6 Promote the mobility of young people in Europe, by giving an extended and clear presentation of Erasmus+ opportunities offered to youth. The staff also suggested participants willing to increase their participation to European youth projects how to find the best chances for fulfilling their wishes (i.e. Erasmus+ session and workshop on EVS). Furthermore, we boosted the feeling of belonging to the European Union, thanks to the several workshops and sessions involving participants in discovering about each other reality (intercultural dinners and evenings, national team presentations of their countries main issues on ecology) and sensitivity (i.e. reflection groups), as well as global issues (i.e. the connection between overconsumption of goods and damages to human and natural life with ‘The story of stuff’ and ‘The true cost’) and debating on topics of common interest (i.e. ‘Electric wire’ method; Q&A after each informative session and debriefing following each activity). We actually promoted a better understanding of the complexity of interconnections between diversity and similarities within Europe, grew their tolerance and respect for diversity.
7 Promote participation in the program of young people with fewer opportunities, in fact there were French participants coming from a ‘second chance school’.
8 Help young people acquire new competences (knowledge, attitudes and skills) and values these through the informal and experiential learning flow of the YE, as well as through specific activities (i.e. the learning zones method). The success of this point, depended on the motivation and commitment of each participant.
Team: Senior and Junior facilitators (1 Italian and 1 Estonian), while project manager and coordinator were both French.
Participants: 30 youth aged 17-25 coming from Spain, Lithuania, France, Romania and Italy (including 5 with fewer opportunities)
During the YE, the facilitating team implemented non-formal education and experiential learning (or learning by doing) strategies, methodologies and methods of work. The pattern we referred to is the Kolb’s cycle of experiencing and processing the learning outcome event-wise derived. We carried out individual activities, as well as in pairs, small groups and with the whole group; we direct training styles and activities to the different learning styles of participants, as well as to their interests and needs. To stimulate participants, we worked with different settings, according to the features of each activity and alternate indoor and outdoor activities, as well as talkative, active and reflective ones. Each activity included the enrollment of participants’ heart, mind and hand, to make out of the experience a holistic learning opportunity. Some activities were agreed to be compulsory, while other optional, in coherence with the key concept of willingness to participate to shared and peer to peer learning and for letting participants with different needs and interests the time and the space for feeding them. Finally, alternating individual to group activities supported each participant to challenge own limits and competences, giving as a result a general holistic growth in their personality and approach to other people and culture. As the hosting and facilitating staff had different background, we created a synergic mix of activities.
Each YE day had a dedicated subject: 1. Team Building 2 Think Global (issues) 3 Think Global (solutions) 4 Cultural day in Carcassonne 5 Act Local (good practices to adopt here) 6 Act Local (good practices to take home) 7 Acting forward 8 Evaluation
Participating to ANOTHER TOMORROW, participants boosted several competences (knowledge, skills, attitudes) and embodied good practices on a socio-cultural and political-economic level, as well as on the sustainability of their lifestyle and their actions, including the awareness of environmental issues affecting the planet.
Participants grew their sense of community and ingagement for a more sustainable personal and community lifestyle by creating the following model and committing to its dissemination:
1. Awareness on own actions (footprint and consequences of our decisions), 2. Keep updated and informed (growing knowledge and critical thinking) 3. Think Global Act Local (butterfly effect) 4. Be example of good practices (walk your talks) 5. Encourage others' sensitivity (disseminating attitude, skills, knowlesge and practices) 6. Get involved (politically and socially active citizenship)
Here follows a videomemory of the YE, realised by the Spanish team:
https://www.facebook.com/brujulaintercultural/videos/752656128439472/?fallback=1
Senior facilitator, agenda designer and report writer