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Training of Trainers – The Volcano of Creativity!

April 2023 saw Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, become a melting pot of innovation for the 'Power Youth Up' initiative. Over seven days, youth workers across Europe shared, learnt, and enhanced methods, all with a singular goal: crafting dynamic, inviting community spaces that resonate with the youth.

Contributed by POD association.

In April 2023, the "Power Youth Up" project implemented training for Trainers in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife (Spain).

For 7 days, 15 Youth Workers from the project's partner entities experimented and analysed methodologies developed to foster creativity and enhance young people's connection in the dynamisation of community spaces. Each organisation presented the best methods they created and the respective contexts.
By participating in the methods and providing feedback to improve them, the youth workers were empowered to replicate the methods locally.

The host organisation was P.O.D. association, which works on the island of Tenerife with young people from different communities in Santa Cruz. The training was co-managed and facilitated by Youth workers from the Portuguese organisations - Youth Coop and Novo Mundo.

On the first day, the Youth Workers had the opportunity to learn the reality of Puerto de la Cruz, visiting spaces dedicated to youth and getting to know the relationship between the locals and the historic centre. Non-formal education methodologies were used to streamline this action in a rally-paper format. On this day, youth workers also had the opportunity to review project and training objectives.

In the following two days, Greek, Romanian, Italian and Portuguese organisations offered moments to experience the activities developed, present results, and collect feedback from the youth workers participating in the training. This was a time to analyse potentialities, share good practices and design methodologies in creativity and youth participation. The partner organisations demonstrated a plurality of activities that resorted to artistic practices, critical thinking development, and collaboration games.

On the fourth day, the group had the opportunity to travel to the city of Santa Cruz, the island's capital, to visit different educational projects developed in areas of social vulnerability with youth and in partnership with local schools. These local projects are developed in collaboration with the hosting organisation, P.O.D., which encourages the development of communities through the promotion of non-formal education, volunteering and local networking. During the afternoon of that day, the group visited the workspaces of the P.O.D. organisation, where they experienced the methodologies developed to work on self-esteem, communication with the group and emotional education.

On the fifth day, the day was for experimenting with the methodologies developed by the Portuguese organisation Youth Coop, whose activities worked on sustainability and plastic recycling issues.
The afternoon was dedicated to the rest of the facilitating team and free time for the participants, offering an opportunity to get to know the city of Puerto de la Cruz and the culture of the Canary Islands better.

The last days were dedicated to organising tasks and implementing pilot activities after the training. This event is an opportunity to streamline work and promote spaces for dialogue and joint work between partners. The thermometer methodology was used to close the training, enhancing the collection of opinions, ideas and suggestions from the participants.

The evaluation made by the participants resulted in learning new methodologies to be used in the contexts of each partner, development and reflection on the work carried out within the scope of the "Power Youth Up" project, and responses to challenges felt when working with different groups of young people.

In conclusion, this training provided Youth Workers with competencies to work on creativity in different areas (artistic, spatial exploration, development of critical thinking, reflection on topics that interest young people) and how this is an attraction to bring young people closer to community spaces.

It was an essential moment of the Power Youth Up project, as it allowed bringing together youth workers from each country to dialogue, recognise and collaborate to improve their professional practices.