2019 was a year of experimentations, new ways of create partnership and consolidate achievements. In this phase, SALTO EUROMED proposed at the end of MOSAIC a new activity: Jordanian Tool Fair open to all the PBA participants and widening the public to youth workers and youth leaders that wanted to come and share how they work and support with their volunteers (not only in European Solidarity Corps, but also in other international or national programmes).
Khadija Amahal during MOSAIC and the Jordanian Tool Fair help the team to captures some important moments and here the educational tools that have been presented that were more interesting for her.
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The workshop started with welcoming the participants, sharing the description of the tool and its objectives. Next, participants were divided into 2 groups. The two topics they worked on are: school bullying and addiction to digital games. Participants were asked to select three pictures that illustrate the topic they are working on ,from the gallery of pictures. Then they had to create a story from these pictures.
When the time of the activity ended, a representative of each group shared the process by which their team worked and the story they made. At the end of the workshop, participants wrote their reflections about the workshop on a flip chart
Unaversity transformative learning workshop included the following points:
Johannes presented the concept of the tool that evolved around understanding what we want to make in life. The tool focused on how we can make transformative change in our society.
The approach of the tool is to learn about change for a more sustainable and resilient good life.
The activities of this tool evolve around project based learning and think camp activities such as hiking, meetings, workshops, summits, prototypes-building the first UNAversity location in Germany
Presentation of the Unavision global system and una village typical week.
Presentation of the circles of the week in university and transformative learning questions which make the person aware of how to learn positive values and unlearn negative practices
Transformative change starts from individuals, it is a bottom up approach and results from collaborative efforts to make change and push governments to react to pressing issues
Presentation of the challenges of this prototype: sustainable economic financial model, finding networking partners and long-term participants.
CUDSA model of conflict management: what do we do when we have conflicts?
CUDSA stands for:
• Confronting the behavior and not the person
• Understanding each other’s position
• Defining the problem
• Searching for the solution that will make both parties happy (not always possible)
• Agreement (both parties are satisfied)
Participants worked in groups of 5 in a 10 minutes exercise: every group had a situation and were asked to tell how to react to the situation and solve the conflict involved in it. When the time ended, every group defined the problem and suggested a solution to solve it
Sarah presented other modes of conflict management such as the nonviolent communication model ,ToPoi model of misunderstanding and the theory of stages of group development
Net me Up for project management:
Silvia from Italy delivered an interesting workshop on project management and partnership building. The activity was really helpful for participants who did not have sufficient information and expertise in the field of project management. The learning style of this model was learner centered as much of the work was done by the learners and Silvia provided feedback after every intervention.
Participants worked on naming the different elements of project building and management such as cultural understanding to avoid conflicts, open discussion ,cooperation, communication, partnership, evaluation, measures and impact, scheduling and risk management.
My goals journey:
Anna from Poland began her workshop with ice breaking activity to motivate participants a little bit before beginning the actual workshop. Then she asked everyone to close their eyes and imagine when they were 25 or when they turn 25 and received an invitation to volunteer for an organization they have always admire in their dream country destination. Then she asked them to open their eyes and write on a sheet of paper one personal goal and one professional goal. Following are the highlights of her intervention:
• It is important to make volunteers comfortable
• Focusing on the personal and professional wants/ goals of volunteers is essential
• It is important to share your goals with other because it motivates others to help and it allows the organization understand your personality better and means to help
• Allow volunteers to be closer to their hearts
• Volunteers should keep their goals visible on a wall and check their progress; if goals are achieved, they come up with new ones
• Make a times line for volunteers’ deadlines
• At the end of the project, the tool is used to exchange and collect feedback of volunteers
Anne led another icebreaking activity before asking the participants to share their personal and professional goals according to a time line she drew. The following are the goals participants shared:
Professional: being able to conduct workshops even if I’m not proficient in a language, enhance my language skills, develop my project management skills, take action, be proficient in English/ Arabic translation, be good at marketing, organizing cultural projects, helping others
Personal: be proud of myself, live independently, start a healthy life style, meet new people ,travel with my love whom I haven’t met yet, become a good painter, help people spread peace, learn how to play violin, be a better version of myself.
The conclusion participants came up with was the necessity of giving time for volunteers to think about what they want to achieve in the near and far future during their volunteering service
When the five rounds of the tool fair ended, everyone joined the main room for the closing session. The director of the French agency expressed his satisfaction of the PBA, the proposed projects and the tool fair. He also announced future projects for 2020.
The National and International Tools Fair are important moment and times for youth workers and youth leaders to share and debate about their working realities, methodologies and challenges. There are not so many places that provide possibility to engage in discussion about "how do we work": which are the methodologies that had a positive impact on our target group, how I was able to transfer some educational approch or tool from one field to another.
We need to foreseen more moment in with youth workers and youth leaders from wider regions and even fields can find contructive working space.
