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Facilitate learning among cultures
Start date: Dec 1, 2015, End date: Jun 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Mobility programs such as Erasmus+ are providing multiple opportunities for youngsters to meet other cultures and organize international meetings that aim to develop intercultural understanding while bringing down stereotypes and reinforcing shared ideas of what Europe and its diversity means. These meetings are at the same time one of the main activities European Commission is promoting in order to strengthen European Citizenship and establish cooperative partnerships. In this context, many of the youth workers involved in this type of activities become facilitators of very sensitive activities, sometimes without going through an accurate process to get comprehensive understanding of its complexities. For this reason, these meetings can bring great results when properly planned and facilitated, but also can easily lead to clashes and misunderstandings among those participating, perpetuating or even building up new prejudices and barriers among them. Due to the specificities of these environments, youth facilitating these activities precise developing several competences, which basically include: awareness about culture and its dimensions, educational approaches in non-formal learning, problem/conflict solving in intercultural settings and competences on facilitation of activities using appropriate non-formal methods. Organizations are running activities with their staff members, placing them in “facilitator” or “trainer” roles, but in many cases those youngsters have not attended comprehensive education activities that equipped them with all the competences necessary to guarantee effective and tailored educational proposals and methods. The main activity is a Training of Trainers. The Training Course will take place in Georgia, from 22st to 30th of March 2016, and will include 28 participants from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine. This Training of Trainers aims to contribute to the development of the mentioned competences among the members of the partner organizations and contribute to the overall improvement of the capacities of youth workers. More precisely, the objectives of the Training of Trainers are: - To explore the different dimensions of culture and how these are connected with intercultural learning; - To strengthen the competences of youth leaders/trainers to plan and implement efficient educational activities in international youth encounters; - To raise the awareness of youth leaders/trainers of the specificities and complexities while facilitating intercultural youth meetings; - To create a portfolio with the outlines of the activities and workshops lead by the participants; - To plan common international youth encounters for young people with fewer opportunities. The methodology will be non-formal education. The methods planned to be used during the main activity include organized input session to transfer knowledge on specific topics such as dimensions of culture or identity conceptualization, group work to develop sessions and session outlines, exercises and workshops to work on the attitudes towards diversity, theatre exercises to present outcomes of conceptual discussions, creative workshops to explore alternative ways to work as trainer/facilitator, role-plays to raise awareness on youth challenges at community level, sharing methods to explore realities and experiences, reflection groups to fine-tune and monitor the process, energizers, name games, ice-breakers and team-building to cohesion the group and contribute to positive group dynamics. The expected impact on participants will basically focus on their intercultural awareness, their competences as trainers and facilitators and their capacities to develop non-formal education activities with comprehensive educational elements. (See sections G and H.1). In this sense, the activity aims to contribute to the objectives of the Erasmus+ KA1, by improving the overall quality in the implementation of international projects, offering innovation and improved capacities to operate with youth and, contributing to the long-term objective of the KA1, to have a systemic impact on the systems of training and youth in the participating countries.
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