From 12th to 19th of April we implemented in Saku (Estonia) the international training course “Make it Happen” on the topic of youth exchange development that we had been planning since 2019!
The first day kicked off with getting to know one another and the realities we come from. We discussed needs of young people, interesting topics for them, key competences and ETS competences for youth leaders.
We also revised the logical steps of project cycles, we dicussed project topics and tried to look at them from different perspectives! Last but not least, we shared good practices in Erasmus+ youth exchanges and got inspired from one another with a passion evening.
On day 3 we started with a full-on cultural immersion by playing “The Derdians”, and we created our working teams to start laying the foundation of our youth exchange projects. Needs, objectives, target groups, partnerships… We also focused on budgeting and finished the day with a bonfire with Estonian pancakes and great music.
As the days passed, we continued working on our projects, focusing on the preliminary schedule and activity flow, and on day 4 we set the road to Tallinn for an Actionbound adventure and some free time in the city.
On day 5, the final countdown started. After checking together the results of our Tallinn Actionbound and giving a round of applause (and a sweet price) to the winning team, it was time to go back to our project-writing process! We revised the target group, the learning objectives and the partnership stages, and then went directly to discussing project management matters.
Group work, group work, group work, and then some exchange in mixed teams to share common struggles and provide inspiring solutions to one another. Then we continued with impact assessment and more questions were unlocked from the online questionnaire, that was already taking shape!
A good Estonian sauna evening liberated us from the accumulated stress and tiredness, and left us ready for another full working day!
On day 6, the final day of the project, we started the morning diving deeper into the topic of dissemination and follow-up activities for our future projects. A lot of learning, discussing, writing and presenting our final results by pitching our projects.
To close the experience, a lot of hugs, receiving the YouthPasses… and crying, because those were the last hours together, but the memories created in these amazing days left us with a full heart!
“The project was implemented by Shokkin Group International and funded by the Estonian National Agency under the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission.”
