#youthification2016

The last day of a training course is always challenging for every trainer because it represents a summary of the whole work done so far in the last few days. Slowly Nik and I started the morning session with the presentations of the participants about their proposals and ideas for international projects. Clearly, for each trainer and project coordinator of such project is crucial to see commitment on the side of the participants to really activate themselves and create new ways of collaborating with their colleagues from this training course. There were many interesting ideas that can promise high potential and probability to be implemented when they go back in their countries, just it will require great support from their home organizations. That is why, after this session we provided clear information about the possibilities of Erasmus Plus Programme and how these opportunities can be used in order to turn their ideas into real projects. Nik and I got many questions during the presentation of the Erasmus Plus Programme and I personally was very happy to see the interest among the participants.

 We made a break for the lunch and when we came back we asked once again the participants to think about their commitment to themselves, to their home organizations but also to the other participants that they met here. What will you commit to? How important is this commitment for you? Do you know to identify real steps that you will be able to implement in the next 6 months? For this, we provided a template “Commitment Agreement” that each participant filled in individually. We collected them and once we scan them and save them in our documentation, we are going to send them back together with their personal messages that they were writing for each other in the last few days. It is a nice method to remind the participants after some time, when they are already back home, what did they commit to and what did they receive as messages from the others. It might be a great motivation to keep up with the positive spirit and continue the dedication to youth work even after the training course.

 The last session was dedicated to the process of evaluation of the whole training course. We went back to the first day when the participants put their expectations on the wall, now we were checking which of those expectations were fulfilled and which are still standing there. The evaluation focused on different aspects of the training course, content-wise, logistics and the whole organization, about their personal learning and about the trainers. After a nice round of feedback, we finished the training course officially by revealing the “Secret Friends” and giving certificates to the participants. Of course, in the evening we organized a small farewell party with some drinks.

And…Where is Leysin?

This morning, our beautiful Leysin got lost in fog and it was our job to find it again. Probably the Swiss Alps wanted to show us their other side which is also inspiring.

Together with Leysin we woke up with a good morning energizer from our great trainers. We really need those energizers because we do not get a lot of sleep over here, just because we want to use every minute to be together and share many things and learn from each other.

Imagine a world with no boundaries and you put a youth worker there. What would he/she do? How would he/she create the perfect youth work? This was our task of the day. Money was no problem and our imagination was at its highest. After we gave our ideas, we evaluated each other’s ideas by commenting with stickers our pros and cons. It was a good exercise because it made us think deeper into the topic what youth work really should be. Giving feedback to the others, helped into our self-assessment for our own ideas. Later we came from the imagination to the reality. After mapping our community, now it was perfect time to check the reality. The trainers gave us time to think about possible proposal, an idea that we would like to implement. Then we were contacting our sending organization and other relevant organizations from our community that can give valuable contribution to our ideas. The point was to start thinking and acting upon real engagement in our local community after we go back home. We really think that this was the first step which will bring us further to the implementation of our ideas.

At the end of the day it was time for reflection and today it was really something different. We should paint inside a “Mandala”. For those who don’t know Mandala is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Indian religions, representing the universe. It is a circle with geometrical shapes in it. Munks created a complex mandala out of sand and put a lot of effort and time into it and after they pray to it , in the end they destroied it. This symbolises that  everything is temporary and we should not get demotivated if things dont go as we planned them. It was such a great time reflecting about the day while we painted the Mandalas.

In the evening we had a great ending with Francisco “The magician”. One of the participants of this training who has awesome skills in magic and made us wonder if magic does really excist with his tricks combined with carisma and laughs. Who knows, maybe magic does still excist in the beautiful Leysin...