Spice Up Your Potential!
27 March – 3 April 2011
European Youth Centre Strasbourg, France

“Spice Up Your Potential!” empowered rural young people and their organisations by providing skills, knowledge and experience in coaching and mentoring. Participants gained practical skills in providing peer support, improving communication skills, setting personal goals and giving feedback to their peers. They also learnt how to train other young people in their organisations and act as multipliers in their home countries.

Aims of the study session:

• To develop the confidence and motivation of participants in the field of coaching
• To empower participants in order for them to build sustainable strategies for coaching in their organisations

Objectives of the study session:

• To identify key personal characteristics and qualities of coaches and mentors
• To provide practical skills to participants in how to coach and mentor other young people
• To support participants in building confidence in their skills potential and assisting self-development of personal competencies
• To exchange best practices on coaching and mentoring between youth organisations
• To gain insight into how coaching and mentoring differs between European countries
• To support the planning and follow-up as multipliers in participants’ home organisations
• To develop a series of materials which are made available online and can be used by participants and other young people in their home organisations

Coaching and peer support were explored through a variety of methods and tools. The week started off on the arrival day by focusing on building the group into a team through ice-breakers and trust games. The following day the participants started with a tour around the European Youth Centre and continued through “Welcome Open Space” by introducing themselves, the programme flow, level of their knowledge on the topics of the study session, sharing their fears and expectations and also introducing Rural Youth Europe, the Youth Employment Action (YEA) project and the Council of Europe. A whole afternoon was dedicated for team building exercises.

The week continued by taking a deeper look into youth coaching, mentoring and peer-to-peer education. Different coaching styles and communications skills were explored before going into expert-led learning strands on “Coaching basics”, “Leadership coaching” and “Job coaching”. After the learning strands all knowledge was shared through various presentations methods and participants started working on their follow-up, personal and organisational development plans. As an outcome of this planning stage, several ideas about recruitment of new members, co-operation between organisations and to develop an event or training for members were created. The intensive working week ended with personal follow-up plans and a very thorough evaluation.

The study session was a key part of the Youth Employment Action (YEA) project of Rural Youth Europe, which aims to improve the access of rural young people to the labour market. The YEA project is supporting European, national and local youth organisations in a positive and constructive way by exploring and developing youth-led solutions to youth unemployment. The project is funded by the Youth in Action programme of the European Union.

See event photos here

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Attachments:

2011 Spice up your potential - REPORT.pdf

Programme - Spice Up Your Potential.pdf

Spring Seminar 2011 - participant's story.pdf