Day 1 Update on #youthification - 21 Aug 2018

Morning sunshine in Leysin with awesome warm weather! We all woke up with high expectations about the official start of the training program today. Everyone had a nice sleep after a long trip and with full enthusiasm entered the working room. After a short introduction we went outside in the nature for a “Walk & Talk”. Breathing the fresh Alp air under the shiny sun, we had an activity to ask interesting questions to each other and discover even more details about each of us. After asking the question and getting an answer, we exchange the questions on piece of paper and hand it over the person who gave us an answer, so then we look for another partner with whom we continue to ask other questions and receive even more insights of their personality. The aim of this activity is to break the walls and barriers between the group and also it is a nice start of building our group that will work together the following 7 days. After a round of one hour we went slowly to the hotel and had a comfort break, definitely deserved after such activity. 

Coming back to the working room, everyone got engaged in “Mingle & Explore”. It was officially the time to present the training program in more details. Several exercises made the group even more aware about the main aim of this training course, also we talked about the terms: group, group work and youth work. All of the participants have some kind of experience from the past related to these topics and therefore this was the space for exploration and sharing among each other. Each of the discussions in small groups resulted with presentations, and of course with much better understanding about what we are actually going to work on this following week.

The lunch break gave us the opportunity to go out again and absorb more of that sunshine and fresh mountain air. With the battery fully charged, we came back to the working room where we started to learn how to learn. For this we needed to create our own “learning diaries” that could capture all the learning points during the sessions. We came out with a learning biography that was identifying important learning points from our lives so far. By sharing these moments in small groups, helped us a lot to reflect about our own learning style. We also explored the different approaches in learning and had a very fruitful discussion about the styles of learning. Something that has changed over the years, how learning really happens. All this was a great basis that we wanted to build in order to be able to go deeper in these topics and later even to experiment with these styles when we are going to have practical work, by leading workshops. Great to see that the whole group is very into these discussions and actively participates with inputs from their experience. 

The “Learning to Learn” concept was then related to the non-formal learning concept. As we are running the training sessions in the frames of the non-formal learning context, it was important to link all this together and put it in our context, something that we are going to do here. The trainers introduced the Kolb Cycle and the group explored the different aspects of it and of the non-formal learning principles.
The end of the day was reserved for the “Learning Boards” that each participant had to create and personalize. During the entire training course, we will have time at the end of each day to come back to the learning boards and structure our learning in a very comprehensive manner. 

A long day, but also a very productive one, because each of us took active participation into the sessions. Night swimming in the pool and relaxing in the warm jacuzzi & sauna is now well-deserved!