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The ‘Safe Space’
I often come across the topic and the question: how to create a safe space for learners in non formal educational programs?
There are training courses, study sessions, endless conversations about what safe space means. Is it a mindset? Is it an environment created by the trainers or facilitators? Or is it created by the members of a group themselves?
Whose responsibility is it to create the so called safe space? And what are its elements?
training
1/22/2023, 15:20
Is self-reflection enough?
One of the most important hallmarks of non-formal learning is the self-directed written evaluation.
This comes from the idea that the scoring system of formal education is not applicable for non-formal learning. The principle is that the learners engage on a voluntary basis and educators make the learning more attractive by not enforcing the good old test-after-the-learning method. This stress factor is rather taken out which is engraved in all of our minds from our school experience.
Another reasoning of using descriptive self-evaluation is that it gives a broader idea to any third-party what exactly was the learning about.
youth work
training
fieldwork
research
egyesek
1/24/2023, 19:59
My facilitation journey: stage freight and environmentalism
In this blog I am going to talk about some aspects of facilitation. When I first encountered the term ‘facilitation’ and ‘facilitator’, I thought it sounded very fancy and complicated. I could not imagine myself as a facilitator, because I thought it would need some special skills that I do not have. By now, I understand that facilitating is actually pretty easy, basically anyone can do it. Facilitation is being in front of a group of people and leading some group activity. Group activities are very common, we do them in daily life at a language school or a yoga class for example. But facilitation is also commonly used in the areas of (professional) trainings and therapy. In these examples, a facilitator does not have to do too much: give some instructions, listen to the audience members and let the group activity flow. The session participants will learn a lot from being in a group and exchanging ideas.
One big obstacle that I faced when I started facilitating is stage freight. It goes like this: I am in front of a group of people, it suddenly gets quiet, everybody is looking at me. When I start talking, I hear my own voice, I can’t think of what to say. I get nervous, I talk fast, trying to wrap up the conversation quickly. And when I am finished I feel bad about not being able to convey the message the way I wanted. Fortunately, I have found ways to deal with my anxiety. I make my introductions short and simple. I don’t need to be funny or particularly interesting. As long as people have clear instructions, it is fine. And I remind myself that in facilitating, I am doing a giant favor to the audience members. During group activities, people need to be told what to do, they like to be coordinated. Without facilitation, groups become chaotic really fast.
youth work
training
fieldwork
siw
External Form Submission
1/24/2023, 19:59
Active Listening: a skill or an art?
As part of the ProfEd Project I have been reflecting and learning a lot about the role of a facilitator and youth worker. I have been also thinking about the skills and competences needed to performe these roles in the best possible way.
During this journey, there was this idea that has always been present either as facilitator, youth worker or even as participant: I need “active listening” in order to learn. I need to be present, to create a connection and to be open and ready to give and receive new information.
Nowadays there is so much information around us, huge “to-do” lists accomplish. Even more distrations online and offline making our presence harder and harder. Our attention became our best asset. I believe our attention became more valuable than gold. And when we talk about education, we talk about our future and the future of the next generations. We talk about listening and being listened.
youth work
training
fieldwork
future
3/21/2023, 18:10
How to convey a message properly? How to communicate in order to get this message across in the way we desire?
During my recent fieldwork, carried out in secondary schools as an extracurricular activity, I got to experience my communication skills in different ways: from the use of the right words, gestures, pauses in speeches, and the “feelings,” or I would better say empathy, of the message to be communicated.
Thanks to what I learned in the first training with ProfessionalED, I was able to move beyond the irrational belief that I could not speak in public and fortify myself that, in fact, it is a skill that wears well on me and somehow belongs to me. In my case, I have matured that it is just a matter of putting it into practice.
In fact, having done the first workshop, my personal confidence was such that I was looking forward to the remaining ones.
youth work
egyesek
training
fieldwork
External Form Submission
4/5/2023, 10:47
Creative and engaged facilitation skills
Dear everyone,
While I am preparing a training course focused on creative and engaged facilitation skills called “FaciliCraft” coming up in the Netherlands in 10 days, I asked myself: what do I think that makes a facilitator an engaging and creative one. Here are my thoughts:
As a facilitator, you guide the process of a group. You are focused on the process, more than the content. To allow the best outcomes of the process, using engaging and creative tools is for me essential. It gives space for the participants to fully participate in the activity, to increase ownership by the participants and they just don’t get bored too! How to do this: I like to use 4Mat approach in the sessions. This includes the following stages: engage - share - practice - perform. Participants in the group first get connected to the topic you facilitate (how does it relate to you?), what can we share about the topic (either from the group, theories, methods, etc.), then to test the methods in the safe space of the activity and finally reflect on how one can use this method in the own context. That is for me a good way to engage participants fully in an activity. Furthermore, these 4 steps also allows different learners (personal connection, theorists, practicioners and the applyers) in the activity as you tackle all their preferred learning procedures.
training
siw
youth work
External Form Submission
10/18/2023, 15:23
What is Radical Responsibility?
The topic of Radical Responsability has been crossing my path in the last months. I started by exploring the concept and understanding how this could be applyed to my life and my work.
I have found out that I can easily create stories that support my perspective and loose my thoughts in this stories. I started to see the concept of “radical responsability” as a doorway to go beyond blame, to give up on the “victim game” and acept that there is no one else to blame.
This perspective invites us to go further into a significant level of maturity before we can claim radical responsibility and act accordingly. We need to let go the concepts of “fairness” and “security” when we claim radical responsibility because being absolutely responsible is neither fair nor secure. I see it as a leap of faith on myself, my skills, my strenghts, my vulnerability.
training
future
research
youth work
11/22/2023, 16:02
Creativity & Problem-Solving!
Usually, when we hear about creativity, we think about artistic creativity. It is so much more than that!
Creativity, by definition, is a process that leads to ideas that are useful and worthwhile, original or not. In that regard, producing ideas is an important and constant part of problem solving.
So, how can we summarize this process? Let’s imagine a diamond shaped diagram, like this ◊. The two halves of the diamond correspond to two sub processes: Divergent Thinking and Convergent Thinking.
training
research
2/19/2024, 22:51
Importance of creativity and positive thinking
I’m usually a bit of a cynical and pessimistic person. Therefore, I would like to share with you the experience from the field work where I can highlight the power of problem solving, creativity, teamwork and positive thinking. And how even despite some problematic circumstances, this can help a lot.
I had my field work with a monitory visit during weekend-long training which is focused on leadership skills. And because this training isn't usually with a lot of participants, we decided to make it on the same venue and with some common program with training of Cycle of Global Volunteering which is pre-departure training for volunteers who are going for projects to the countries of Global South.
training
inex-sda
fieldwork
4/24/2024, 18:49
Crossing paths
In the spring of 2024, having reached the end of the involving ProfED journey, Educatori Senza Frontiere ("educators without borders"), an association with which I have been collaborating for years, proposed to me and another collegue to leave for Bolivia with the aim of organizing a training course for teachers in the Amazonian region. The course was aimed at creating a group of people passionate about education who wanted to renovate methodologies, motivation and strategies to be used in their work contexts, in daily contact with generations of children and young people who are always changing and challenging. The work began with a collection of needs from afar, through a series of meetings, to understand the starting point and the desires of the participants. Once I met the group, made up of 37 people, everything then began to build fluidly day after day. We didn't prepare any session before we met personally the group (following one of the main learning of ProfED!) and i thought i would have been working mainly based on my professional experience in education and pedagogy. But during these incredible weeks, every day my memory and my thoughts were connected to the days spent in Holloko. Facilitating this group was the greatest opportunity to become aware and share the fruits of the journey made with ProfED: from the attention to recognizing and involving the different learning styles of the participants, to the creation of spaces to reflect on self-assessment and continuous exchange with the other people, up to the involvement of the body to integrate the experience into the senses. No specific and technical contents were given, we finished to build up a flexible path around the exploration of the resources they already had in their own but they could't see and recognize. They were expecting our contents like "experts from abroad", and we found ourselves discovering their own spontaneous expertises, which they could count on and which they could cultivate from that moment on. Their notebooks waiting to be filled with lessons on new methods, found themselves filled with words of self-discovery.
Without having decided it beforehand, I found myself retracing the ProfED trainings looking for those specific sensations, trying to intuit what the group might need at that moment and re-adapting my memories and ideas to that very different context.
On the last day we made them organizing some workshops, for which the participants divided themselves into groups and self-prepare a program in which to propose and manage an activity each. The emotionality was high and also the level of compromise, many thought they were not ready and were tired from the very intense and demanding way of working of the previous days. But at the end of the day, when through our facilitation they finished writing the manifesto of "Educadores sin Fronteras Bolivia", the group they had just formed, the light in their eyes had changed, becoming almost blinding. I never would have thought that in a few days something so powerful could be created, like this, on the other side of the world with people who until a moment before were unknown and with opposite expectations about the work we would have done together. Instead, once again, I experienced how going through paths of this kind can help to see and feel how much potential exists in the human being, who can't wait to be freed. All you have to do is create with care, love and patience, the right “container” and believe in it until the end.
training
benedetta campia
10/18/2024, 17:19
Multiplier flyer
SIW ran two multiplier events. One internationally, to inspire colleagues from international voluntary service organisations about our experiences. And one locally, at a Vocation and Educational Training centre in the south of the Netherlands. The school collaborates with SIW for their students to find their impact abroad. At the same time, there are quite a number of teachers that are very committed and dedicated to organise international experiences for their students.
But.... do they also acknowledge their own development through such experiences? Yes, but at the same time, this is sometimes put as a secondary outcome. Which I would like to disagree with. Students and staff are direct beneficiairies from international mobility projects! It was very nice to brainstorm with them regarding their own learning outcomes from these experiences. The Skillsbuilder tool, which was applied in ProfessionalED, was introduced as a tested and meaningful tool to support the learning process and recognise the development. At the same time, it is also a learning environment for the staff members that would like to improve their competences.
siw
Rob van Leeuwen
11/1/2024, 13:38
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