In the days of September 25-29, 2013 in CEULAJ (Euro-Latin-American Youth Center / Mollina, Spain) Training on Quality Assurance in Non-Formal Education was organized by European Youth Forum. JECI-MIEC European Coordination was represented through European Team member 2012-2014 Romana Mysula.
Activists from 22 Youth organisations from Europe took part. The training lasted for 3 days only, but gave an opportunity to take a closer look at the cycles that exist in NFEQA and include:
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Preparation (Team, Project)
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Identify peers (intro to project, select common ground, timeframe)
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Develop sub-indicators and share with peers
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Peers give feedback on indicators and update
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Project implementation
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Assessment of the project (internal with the team)
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Feedback by peers (lessons learned? quality assured?)
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Reflection and follow-up
Also 11 Indicators that could be of great help in order to improve quality in organisations’ activities were introduced and worked upon. Indicators (p.24) and more information to the topic can be accessed here:
http://issuu.com/yomag/docs/nfeqa_manual_single#
By learning how to implement the Framework, youth organisations are expected to increase level of awareness about their educational work and contribute to further improving the overall quality of their NFE projects. – See more at: http://www.youthforum.org/latest-news/strengthening-youth-organisations-with-quality-assurance-training/#sthash.CiMcDvrU.dpuf
All in all, QA aims to increase the quality of Non-Formal Education in Europe and as a result establish the recognition of this quality.
The added value of the activity was that it was a part of University on Youth and Development that takes place annually and is organized by the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe (NSC) in partnership with the Spanish Government (INJUVE), the European Youth Forum (YFJ), the Spanish Youth Council (CJE), the Latin-American Youth Forum (FLAJ) and other international youth organisations and youth serving organisations.
The topic of this year’s University was Democratic Citizenship. Many other trainings, seminars and meetings were parts of this University. In total there were about 200 participants from all over the world. Networking and better understanding were stimulated through common activities that took part in the evenings and during Closing session, where short overview of each working group were shown in creative and artistic manner.
(article written by Romana Mysula)
Picture by Romana Mysula
Pictures by Linn Landmark photography