Youth Power is a long-term training program implemented by the Office for European Expertise and Communications in 2019-2020. It was aimed at developing the competencies of multipliers – young people – who will work with their peers using non-formal education methods. For six months young people developed their leadership competencies, skills in organizing youth initiatives and engaging peers in social activity.
Initially, the design of the program involved three offline trainings and one Youth Makethon – a 2-day-event to develop their own project ideas. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the last training of the program was changed to the online format and was held in the form of a series of Zoom meetings in March-June 2020. The graduation party was also held online.
As a result, 20 young people received a certificate of completion of the program, as they took part in at least 75% of the course and proved to be able to work with their peers as multipliers. 75 young people (20 teams and 13 mentors from Youth Power team) took part in the Youth Makethon in March 2020, where 17 teams presented their project ideas at the final pitch.
As a result of the course, the participants:
- understand their role as a multiplier or leader working with young people;
- developed basic competencies for conducting offline and online workshops on the topics “Digital Security”, “Critical Thinking” and / or planned and conducted workshops on other relevant topics (assertiveness, countering domestic violence, self-acceptance, communication, etc.);
- understand what youth participation is and know the different levels of youth participation;
- use methods for identifying the needs of young people;
- are proficient in facilitation methods for young people to develop ideas for youth initiatives.
- know how to work and educate online using challenges, broadcasts, information campaigns, contests, webinars and structured online courses;
All in all, more than 1200 young people from Vitebsk, Mogilev, Grodno, Borisov, Gomel, Molodechno, Minsk, and other cities took part in 90 training events held by 20 multipliers.
