Training for Trainers on Skills and Practices to boost Youth Role on Sustainability and Social Inclusion
To begin with…
A number of peοple from 7 countries arrived on the 23rd of July in Villa Bruno. Villa Bruno islocated in San Giorgio a Cremano (NA). San Giorgio a Cremano is a town that belongs to the department of Naples and rises close to the sea level. This is the place that usually hosts youth leaders, peer educators, local project leaders, youth workers and trainers. Our training course was focused on the topics of sustainability, social inclusion, youth policies, youth unemployment, poverty and marginalization, using non formal education working methods, in order to provide the involved participants with competences and practices to boost youth role on sustainability, promote active citizenship and support youth activities.
Everyday during the course was an experience, from the early morning, during the day, and in the evening when we were all relaxing around the dinner table. We went through different workshops followed by different themes. In the very beginning it was really challenging to match with the other participants, to remember their names and interact. We had energizers to boost our energy after several hours of discussions, we had activities and played games in order to deepen more into the topics, we made debriefings in between the activities and had reflection group meetings in the end of the day.
We participated in three different workshops. We were working mainly on the topics of Education, Sustainability and Social Inclusion. We had discussions of the differences in formal, in-formal and non-formal education. We reviewed definitions and quotes on the topic of sustainability and social inclusion, as a step to raise awareness and create a common communication framework between the participants. We became actors having roles others than our characters, and country leaders in order to discuss and cover topics of natural resource availability, the economical crisis and other major issues of social inclusion. All of this are summarized in the next section. Our favorite moments are presented in six different short length videos about our everyday activities.
Gaining all the necessary experience day by day, the last day was quite challenging for all the participants since our last task was to become trainers for a short workshop. We applied every knowledge that we gained during the training course. At first the participants formulated two different teams and each team worked on a different topic. The topics were about Sustainable Transportation patterns (See video 3) and Eco-farm (See video 4). At the planning stage we had one evening for each group to prepare and organize the workshops. In other words, we had to create a dynamic workshop, which had to include an energizer activity, short interactive and thematic activities, describe the process for group discussions and summarize the outcomes at the debriefing stage.
Our Experience
It is always a challenge when people from different backgrounds gather all together to discuss and exchange ideas and practices on several topics. Sometimes it seems really difficult to remember the names of a large group. However, when there is an interaction between a group of people every person reveals one characteristic and an expression that makes you remember the name and the character behind. During this course, communication was sometimes a challenge for some people in the group, but there was always someone willing to assist the other participants when communication issues arose. Nevertheless, the body language and the phrasal expressions brought a comfortable communication environment. We managed to work together and interact in a fruitful way.
Everyday the workshops have been planned in a way that linked the topics of the following days. The bridge between the topics as well as the methods to create a dynamic and united group during the training course was critical and facilitated the whole process. In this course all daily activities between the group members were dynamic and helped in keeping the participants active with interesting conversations. Every skill and competence that we gained from the whole seminar was based on non formal educational methods. This training course revealed that participants from different countries share similar cultural characteristics and experience. This made us realize the common social problems that our countries face. The experience of creating and planning a workshop in one day summarized all the key competencies we gained during the training course and provided us with valuable experience to be able and ready to apply this knowledge of being a trainer for future projects.
Ioannis Chamilos
Maria Dimitrakopoulou
Our Favorite moments
See more videos: http://youtu.be/2FGqQVOnaYI , http://youtu.be/yLsNBuq6z9g , http://youtu.be/G-OmIQdOrEI , http://youtu.be/UVq8f393nes , http://youtu.be/8Qyhjy2s7sU
