Facility to Facilitate is a 7 days training course taking place in Estonia, from the 07/11/2017 until the 15/11/2017. It will gather 28 participants coming from 8 different countries: Estonia, Spain, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria,Romania and Czech Republic.

The aim of this project is to provide the space, time and safe environment for youth workers to develop their facilitation skills and create innovative activities that can be used in their daily work with youngsters. Testing them on spot and getting feedback will increase their future applicability. As well as to improve the creativity, individual self-awareness and personal competences of non-formal learning professionals (trainers and facilitators) working with youth groups in the field of youth participation.

Our objectives are:
To evaluate personal competences of 28 non-formal learning practitioners working with young people and further develop them in a safe training environment

To increase awareness of 28 youth workers about their own values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour, about cultural and self expression (considering the use of voice, intonation, body language, gestures, positioning, use of space, mimics, graphics, handwriting etc.) and about own communication patterns in various (learning) settings

To explore individual personal styles, ethics, approaches etc. in non-formal contexts of 28 youth workers

To create and develop non-formal learning methods aiming at supporting the personal and professional development of practitioners through the Creativity Lab

To reflect and assess personal experience in the topic of youth participation, particularly in stimulating participation in formal settings and encourage the development of competences, methods and techniques of engaging young people from formal settings in participatory projects and of inspiring them to remain active

To strengthen participants’ knowledge of the Erasmus + Programme and to provide them with the context to develop new project ideas stemming from the exchanges and learning acquired during the training

The target group we aim to offer this experience to are educators and youth workers actively involved in our partner organizations and working with youngsters on a regular basis. On another level, we also want to extend this opportunity to trainers and facilitators who are interested to renovate their tools and exercises and create new ones for their workshops and projects. One of the criteria we considered in the choice of partner organizations for this project is their focus on working with youth with fewer opportunities, for example facing cultural differences, suffering social or economical obstacles. Selecting youth workers that are facing this same issues will enrich this project and will extend its impact when supporting youngsters in the local level.

The working methods used is this project are based on non-formal education and experiential learning. They will encourage active participation and an atmosphere of inclusion, tolerance towards diversity, acceptance, and trust within the group. Specially in the second part of the youth exchange we will often work in small groups, which will provide space for more active participation and involvement of all the participants, an opportunity for deeper reflections and understandings, leading to a more self-directed learning.

As a result, the participants of the Training Course will create the “Facility to facilitate booklet” that will contain the workshops created by the participants. We expect them to be powerful resources to be used in the future, for that reason we will share the booklet with the partner organization of this project as well as with other organizations that we are in contact so that all of them can benefit from this outcome. We believe that this action will have an impact in other international projects carried out by partner organizations, boosting their quality by adding resources to their toolbox.

Partners will create stronger connection and share the methods applied so far. The recognition of non-formal learning through YouthPass and the value of international mobility will increase, more and higher quality international projects will be organised.