Actualize your potential: Facilitate! is a Training Course that will gather 30 participants coming from 9 different countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom. The activity will take place in Alsótold, Hungary in June, 2018.

The aim of this project is to provide the space, time and safe environment for youth workers to develop their facilitation skills and create innovative activities that can be used in their daily work with youngsters. Testing them on spot and getting feedback will increase their future applicability. As well as to improve the creativity, individual self-awareness and personal competences of non-formal learning professionals (trainers and facilitators) working with youth groups in the field of youth participation.

Our objectives are:

• To evaluate personal competences of 30 non-formal learning practitioners working with young people and further develop them in a safe training environment;
• To increase awareness of 30 youth workers about their own values, beliefs, attitudes and behavior, about cultural and self expression (considering the use of voice, intonation, body language, gestures, positioning, use of space, mimics, graphics, handwriting etc.) and about own communication patterns in various (learning) settings;
• To explore individual personal styles, ethics, approaches etc. in non-formal contexts of 30 youth workers;
• To create and develop non-formal learning methods aiming at supporting the personal and professional development of practitioners through the Creativity Lab;
• To reflect and assess personal experience in the topic of youth participation, particularly in stimulating participation in formal settings and encourage the development of competences, methods and techniques of engaging young people from formal settings in participatory projects and of inspiring them to remain active;
• To strengthen participants’ knowledge of the Erasmus + Programme and to provide them with the context to develop new project ideas stemming from the exchanges and learning acquired during the training;

The target group we aim to offer this experience to are educators and youth workers actively involved in our partner organizations and working with youngsters on a regular basis. On another level, we also want to extend this opportunity to trainers and facilitators who are interested to renovate their tools and exercises and create new ones for their workshops and projects. One of the criteria we considered in the choice of partner organizations for this project is their focus on working with youth with fewer opportunities, for example facing cultural differences, suffering social or economical obstacles. Selecting youth workers that are facing this same issues will enrich this project and will extend its impact when supporting youngsters in the local level.