Training course: The Star of Europe

Location: Thessaloniki, Greece

Dates: 11-15 May 2020

Number of participants: 30

Participating countries: Erasmus+: Youth in Action Programme countries

Apply here: application form(need to register on Salto)

Organizer: INEVIDIM Youth and Life Long Learning Foundation

Deadline to apply: 22 March 2020

Date of Selection: 10 April 2020

Inquiries about this training course: paavo.pyykkonen@oph.fi

Costs:

Participation fee

There is no participation fee by the hosting National Agency. If you have questions about participation fee, please contact the National Agency of Erasmus+ Programme (Youth in Action) in your home country.

Accommodation and food

The hosting National Agency of this offer will organise the accommodation and covers the costs for accommodation and food.

Travel reimbursement

Your sending National Agency will cover your travel costs. The way countries reimburse the travel costs varies from country to country.

If you are selected to participate in this training, the National Agency in your home country will contact you and tell you how the reimbursement is organised in your country.

The Star of Europe

The Star of Europe training will take you through a youth exchange project from its very beginning to the very end, highlighting young people’s involvement. You will also learn how to use the digital Star of Europe material in building the exchange.

Learn How to Make Real Youth Exchanges!

Whatever you have heard about youth exchanges before or however you have organised them before, this training is teaching you how to make youth exchanges like they are meant to be!  You will learn how to support young people to make their own projects, and not to make the projects for them.

Focus on involvement and partnership

The original idea of a youth exchange is a long term learning process for the groups of young people in participating countries. Young people are involved in a process, where they come up with the idea for the project, choose the topic for it and design the activities for its programme. They run the activities themselves and plan dissemination activities that they organise for other young people.

The process is linked to learning – the more the young people are involved in the process, the more new learning situations they end up in. In The Star of Europe, we will look at all the steps of youth exchange project, to see how the young people can be involved in all aspects of the project, learning new things throughout it.

We will also look at how the young people in each participating countries can be part of the process – that is how the learning is equal in all youth groups, not only the hosting one.

Unlike how many youth exchanges are organised, we want to promote the original idea of youth exchanges – and let the youth exchanges to be young people’s own projects, not projects planned by adults to young people.

Digital material supporting your process

The Star of Europe has also its own extensive digital material, which was based on the printed material that was created earlier. Now both of these materials exist side by side, but the digital material is always available and can be used together with partners and the young people in every group.

Each step includes Learning Badges that young people can earn while working on the different elements of project planning. The badges show you the progress in your process and help the young people to see their involvement. After the process the badges help you and your young people to see what learning experiences you will forward to the Youthpasses.

In the training the digital material is used so that the participants will learn how to use it when they go back home to work with their young people.

If you want to see what is available or start using the Star of Europe material, please go to starofeurope.eu

Aims and objectives

The aim of “The Star of Europe” is to get a comprehensive understanding of what a youth exchange project contains – from the idea, needs assessment of a project to the follow up activities. More specifically, the main objectives are:

1) To become familiar with the whole logic of life cycle of a youth exchange project

2) To increase the understanding of the value of full involvement of young people in youth exchanges

3) To become aware of  learning opportunities of the young people within youth exchanges

4) To pay extra attention to the equal partnership and encourage partners to plan, prepare, implement and report the project together

5) To get acquainted with a Star of Europe digital platform as a tool for support of youth exchanges

Training for newcomers and experienced

If you work regularly with youth groups, professionally or voluntarily, you are a good participant in this training. As a youth worker, youth leader or group leader, you already have a group of interested young people or an idea, how to find an interested group to work with.

You can be a newcomer or someone who has already organised youth exchanges, but has not involved young people in the planning of the projects before.

You will have to be over 18 years old. We prioritise applicants who work directly with a group of young people and who are interested in forming partnerships for future projects.