Local environment animation - new chance for youth development

<< Background >>The motivation for the development of this project were meetings between the employees of our Career Office and our students from various fields.During these meetings, young people often admitted that they did not have any specific career plans. They were often students with good academic record, involved in the life of the university and acting as volunteers in various organizations. The biggest problem for them was that they came from small towns where there was no broader career prospect. An animator of the local environment seems to be an ideal profession for such people. This is how the idea of preparing a project was born, which would introduce young people to the profession of animator, which is currently not very popular in our country. Wanting to prepare materials for the project, we used the help of foreign partners and, after consultations, we decided to prepare a project aimed not only at young people in Poland. << Objectives >>The main goal of the project was to increase the knowledge and skills necessary to perform the profession of an animator of the local environment, as well as to increase the interest of young people in this profession, by developing a number of training and information materials targeted at young people in various EU countries. Detailed objectives: •Equipping young people who want to work as an animator of the local environment with tools enabling them to acquire knowledge and skills useful in working in this profession•increasing young people's awareness of the possibility of working as an animator of the local environment and the specificity of working in this profession •increased interest of young people in various EU countries in the profession of an animator of the local environment<< Implementation >>The activities within the project can be divided into two groups. The first of them are activities related to project management, ensuring the appropriate quality of project activities and the developed results, as well as activities related to disseminating information about the project, its assumptions, planned results, and finally disseminating the developed results. The second group of activities were activities focused on the preparation of materials planned under the project. Here, the activities depend edon what we planned to achieve as part of a given result.•O1 - Publication. In their activities, the partners focused on preparing the content for individual chapters of the publication. At the beginning, the exact scope of the content that should be included in the publication was determined, then the structure of individual chapters and the graphic design - thanks to this, the whole material should be uniform. After that, each of the experts prepared their part of the publication, and then the chief expert put it together. •O2 - online courses. Each of the partners was actively involved in the development of both test questions (pre-tests and post-tests) as well as content for individual courses and webinar scenarios. After the content was prepared, the tests were developed in an interactive form and the webinars were recorded. The all parts were then be assembled into courses. The next step was to test the courses - in which experts from all partner organizations were involved. After testing, the final version of the courses was developed and posted on the project website. •O3 is brochure that was prepared by all experts from the partner organizations. The first step was to determine the exact content of the brochure and the layout of the individual chapters - so that the whole material was consistent. When each of the partners fiished their part of the brochure, the main expert put it together, and then it was consulted with young people - to check if it is understandable, attractive and useful for them. The final version was then posted on the project website.<< Results >>The results that were developed as part of the project •O1 – publication containing main information about the profession of local environment animator, with its description, list of skills needed in this job, concrete instructions about organization of work, as well as list of good practices with usage of non-standard training tools. •O2 - A collection of training materials supporting the development of soft skills of people who want to work or work as animators of the local environment. The materials contain of a series of thematic webinars on individual competences, as well as text materials and tests to check the knowledge of people listening to webinars (in the form of pre-tests and post-tests, both to be done by individuals and to be carried out by the institution). training) •O3 - a brochure addressed to young people, containing basic information about what an animator of the local environment does, what competences should they have, where to get them, and therefore it is worth becoming interested in working in this profession. Apart from the quantifiable results, we hope that the project also contributed and will contribute to: • Change attitudes young people, representatives of local communities, local NGOs about importance of work of local animator in development of local communities • increasing professionalism in the performance of professional duties by people already working as local environment animators, thanks to the possibility of improving their soft skills • increasing the standards of work of so far working local environment animators. • contribute to development of at least few local communities, thanks to professional development of local environment animator.