“Youth Employability Leaders of Tomorrow”
“Youth Employability Leaders of Tomorrow” is a 8 day Mobility of Youth workers-Training course, organised by Youth Support Centre in Wrocław, Poland on first half of December 2018. It brought together 31 youth workers, leaders, trainers and staff of organisations from Poland, Spain, Italy, Croatia, FYR.Macedonia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal.
NECI Cyprus was a promoter with three representatives, Dimitris Imanimis, Antonis Kakoullis and Julios Zoumos.
I was a participant- representing NECI Cyprus- to the training course Youth Employability Leaders of Tomorrow” a 9 day Mobility of Youth workers-Training course, organized by Youth Support Centre in Wrocław, Poland from 10 to 18th of December 2018 that brought together youth workers from different countries ( Poland, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal) with aim to to combat youth unemployment in participating countries by providing new and improved competences and practical tools to youth workers, exchanging good practices and experiences between organisations and by serving as space to plan and design activities that can improve the employability of young people they work with. I can admit that I learned a lot of things from this training course and I gain valuable experience. To begin with I have developed my competence in using and provide concrete practices of non-formal education methodologies and approaches that develop and improve soft skills and employability of young people. The most important lesson I learned/took from this training course is that youth people despite their own problems (their vulnerAbility) they took part in this training course in order not only to understand the transnational issues of youth unemployment and socio-economic consequences it brings to youth and societies in whole Europe but also find solutions to combat them. Below I would like to narrate the activity we did during the first day of the project which was related to Non Formal Education, the main method which was used for achieving the objectives of this project. By non-formal education we mean any organised educational activity outside the established formal system – whether operating separately or as an important feature of some broader activity – that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objectives. In order to understand better the method of Non formal education we have created a chart in a paper. In the main circle we wrote Non – Formal Education and we draw lines starting from the circle with words in relation to what NFE means. Some of the ideas metioned by the partcipants in regards to what do they think about NFE, what does it mean, it´s focus or how is achieved where the following: self assesment, flexible, structure, focus on emoticons, differents percpectives, outside from the formal system, learning by doing, go outside of the comfort zone, energizers and the most important that has a holistic approach and it´s unconventional. I can admit that in the end everybody was very enthousiastic about the aspects of NFE which have been revealed in the chart.
Dimitris