Youth Work for Development of Disadvantaged Areas

Aims & objectives

Main objectives of this TC were:
- To show how youth from disadvantaged areas can equally benefit from the opportunities provided by Erasmus+ programme
- Support the development of disadvantaged areas with different projects
- Spread knowledge and share best practices to raise capacities of rural youth and communities
- Enhance youth workers’ skills to guide youngsters to build entrepreneurial skills and start new initiatives
- Improve youth workers’ leadership skills to motivate youngsters towards their self-development
- To foster exchange of best practices and future cooperation among organizations to develop new projects and initiatives

Target group & international/intercultural composition of the group & team

The Training course included the participation of 26 youth workers from the following Countries: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Ukraine

Training methods used & main activities

Non-formal and informal learning methods were used throughout the duration of the Training. Focus was given on the ways to engage rural youth groups through, need assessment tools and survey tips, creative thinking exercises and study visits to local businesses and youth centres to exchange good practices and trigger possibility of networking

Outcomes of the activity

Thanks to the activities carried out throughout the project, participants had the opportunity to improve their key competences, as defined in the Youthpass and specific in relation to the topics of the Training.
In particular, participants developed competences in analysing the local context in which their organisations have an impact, becoming able to better recognise its need and opportunities. During the activity, participants had the chance to test in practice different theoretical concepts related to rural youth participation and then practiced tools and methods applicable in their communities. They also created by the end of the training surveys/questionnaires to distribute to the local community, as well as designed different social enterprise ideas and Erasmus+ draft projects

Your tasks and responsibilities within the team

As freelance trainer, after an initial phase of contacts with the reference person of the organizations promoting the project and after finalizing the design of some of the activities, I was in charge to facilitate and train the group of participants in specific workshops, learning activities and reflection moments

I worked on this training for 9 days as a full time trainer.