Representatives of the NGO Mladiinfo Montenegro participated in the Erasmus training “Quality for Change” held in Romania from October 2nd till 8th in the town of Bran, Brasov.
The training, organized by the Asociatia Euvolume Romania, in addition to participants from Montenegro, brought together youth workers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Greece, Jordan, Palestine, Portugal, Romania and Turkey. The main goal of the training was for participants-youth workers to share their experience, knowledge and exchange examples of good practice when it comes to working with the NEET population and organizing socio-educational activities in this area. The NEET population includes young people who are not employed, are not in the process of education or in the process of any kind of education. The training started with a tour of the city of Brasov, where through various energizers and team-building activities the participants got to know each other better in order to continue the sessions in the coming days through group work. Through multi-day sessions, the aim was to create an adequate educational environment that will improve mutual understanding when it comes to youth work with this population. So, at the beginning of the training, there was talk about what the NEET population is and who belongs to this group. The factors that lead to a person becoming a NEET were also discussed. Each state provided statistics on the state of the NEET population, sociological causes, and other relevant data. From session to session, we went deeper into the issue itself; they discussed working with this group and the process of providing support, designing and long-term implementation of activities that will enable to overcome obstacles and to employ or educate one young NEET person. We worked on developing strategies and devising useful innovative tools in youth work that can facilitate work with young people who are not in the process of education or employment, how to productively implement activities with maximum impact on their future employment, etc. Everything took place through interesting work in groups, through role-play, imitation, dramatic performance, visual address, etc. At the group level, participants had the opportunity to design a project to help the NEET population, what kind of project it would be, from the description, goals, target group, activities, all the way to budgeting. In this way, everything was comprehensively approached and the solution was gradually worked on through various phases in order to improve the status of NEETs.
The approach of the trainer who led the sessions was a praiseworthy, professional, pleasant and friendly approach that interested each participant in the topic and motivated them to participate. As a result of the training, a booklet will be created that will include all project ideas of participants in working with the NEET group.
This Erasmus training, in addition to being meaningful and useful, reaffirmed its essential goal of connecting people, making international friendships, networking and building relationships between different countries as a basis for future work on change in society.
