Between July 17-24, Dragana Jovanovska from CID participated in a training course held in Chiari, Italy. The training course, named ”Quality in non-formal learning for youth workers”, was hosted by Youmore – Morcelli Giovani(Fondazione Istituto Morcelliano). Dragana attended the training course as a participant and a logistics member of the staff.
The training course gathered 20 people from around Europe with the purpose to develop the knowledge and skills of active and experienced youth workers and leaders in order to plan and implement non-formal learning programs for their youth workers and offer quality training and mobility opportunities. The program of the training explored the following aspects of youth work: learning styles, learning by doing, methodology, group building, non-formal education, etc.
Dragana highlighted the activity that engaged the participants the most: the practical workshop, in which the participants, divided into groups of 4, had to design an implement a 45-minute workshop in the youth center that hosted them. The activity her group implemented addressed inequality and raised awareness about the global situation: the children were invited to arrange chairs on a world map drawn on the ground, based on how they think that resources are located on a global scale. After that they were invited to position themselves based on the population numbers. After this part of the exercise was done, the facilitators presented the real situation and asked the children to re-position the chairs and themselves based on the real data. The learning outcome of this exercise was to visually understand how inequality impacts the global image.
Another activity that Dragana shared with us was the dinner night: the participants were invited by the locals to experience an Italian dinner in family. This was a great opportunity to connect with the local reality and to give the whole training course a more personalized touch. The same host families were invited to join the intercultural night organised later by the participants. ”This is the added value of the youth center that we visited – that they involve the parents and families of the children in the educational process”, thinks Dragana.