This June, together with the ICYE International Office, we held a training St. Pölten. The “Competence Lab” had the goal of developing a toolkit of training activities for volunteers that is aligned with ICYE’s new competence framework. 10 staff, 1 board member, 1 representative from a partner organisation, and 3 volunteers (7 of them under 30 years old) from diverse communities across the world came together to co-create and learn from each other’s experiences and different backgrounds.
At the end of the five days, key learning outcomes were identified, a journey of change with the main activities for the phases in the volunteer programme cycle established and ideas to improve host project descriptions collected. The Lab used collaborative and interactive methodologies to work on the activities. The diversity of the group contributed to analyse these from different country contexts and different stakeholder perspectives (both staff and volunteers).
The evaluation from the participants highlighted that they learnt a lot from each other, were being challenged in their ways of thinking, will bring home new perspectives and valuable information and tools, learnt more about ICYE and the importance of competence in our work, new ideas for camp activities and ways to improve/develop our current camps.
“I gained valuable insight, knowledge and experience. I will be taking all of it home and I feel confident now that I can help my country’s branch, as I’m new to the field and inexperienced. So, it was incredibly helpful for me personally to get the opportunity to participate and get to learn from you all in person.”
You can read the whole report in English and see some more photos from the training sessions in this document.
