This month Youth Power managed to organize two training courses within Erasmus+ programme and last week (August 14 – August 22) we were in Split, Croatia, on „HandinHand: Learning through Volunteering“ training course where 30 participants from Croatia, Serbia, Germany, Sweden and United Kingdom gathered to share their knowledge and experience in this field. Through non-formal education they had opportunity to learn more about how to achieve a common understanding of the relevance of NFE for volunteers and how support non-formal learning of volunteers in our organisations.
This project focuses on the needs of our volunteers, especially on their learning, as most of the volunteers are youngsters and they will benefit from using basic concepts and values of non-formal education.
The whole programme of the TC was developed on non-formal education and learning by doing methods. The first part of the TC served as some kind of the ice-breaker, participants were knowing each other, they were introduced with Youthpass certificate. Participants talked with trainers about their volunteering experience and later they discussed the values of volunteering and the realities of volunteering in their countries.
On the second of training course, they focused more on TC activity’s general topic – interconnection between NFE and volunteering: starting from exploring basic concepts and values of non-formal education, experiential learning and relevance of NFE for volunteering. Participants had opportunity to explore how an organisation can support volunteers and their learning process; and also, how to incorporate NFE in volunteer programmes, in volunteers’ job description and in monitoring and evaluation of volunteers. The main activity of this second part was „Fashion show“ that they organized. The main task was to present themselves, their organizations and volunteering in their countries. On this part of training course, they were also focused on self-directed and experiential learning.
Throughout this process, participants had developed and adjusted the volunteering programme of their organisations to the learning needs of their (present and future) volunteers. In the final part, participants explored and shared examples of good practice, explore the Erasmus+ programme and reflect on their own learning during the TC.
Another objectives of this training course were:
- To learn about Youthpass and new 8 key competences
- To raise participants’ ability to identify and pursue their learning needs
- To achieve a common understanding of volunteering
- To identify motivating factors for volunteers and their needs in order to address them appropriately
- To share experiences about volunteering programmes and volunteer management in our countries/communities
- To achieve a common understanding of NFE, self-directed learning, life-long learning and experiential learning
- To achieve a common understanding of the relevance of NFE for volunteers
- To identify how to support non-formal learning of volunteers in our organisations
- To identify and implement non-formal learning in volunteer programme and volunteers’ job description
- To identify how to incorporate NFE in the monitoring and evaluation of volunteers
- To develop a proactive plan/strategy in order to implement NFE in our organisations after the TC
- To explore Erasmus+ opportunities to promote learning of volunteers
- To raise participants’ ability to self-assess their learning achievement
