Trainers library is going to be a platform(website) where all the needed resources will be available for one youth worker or trainer to be able to develop competencies that will enable them to successfully work with groups of youngsters and individuals within an Erasmus plus program but also many other national regional and local programs. The trainers library is going to be innovative concept because all of the information are going to be based on the European trainers competency model so the information provided their is going to be easy to find and use, checked for relevance by some of the best trainers in Europe, very good organized, labeled and indexed. The project is consistent from many phases but the most important ones are the research from the already created materials and resources, crowdsourcing campaign for all additional things for the trainers from around Europe to share, and design of new methods, tools, resources for the competencies for which materials are really difficult to find or they are upapplicable. All this materials are going to be uploaded and organized one of the website that it's called trainers library. It is going to be open-source platform for everyone to use for free and without any limitations. The expected results from this project are that thousands of youth workers and trainers for many different countries are going to use this platform for their personal and professional development in order to do their work better and create higher quality and more opportunities for young people. Better experiences for the young people will create more active, open-minded youth and it will have an impact on all our societies in general. This trainers library is only the start as we expect that the long-term the concept will develop not only for the needs and development of professional and personal skills for the trainers, but that will go in that action of similar kind of organizational resources for them to deliver knowledge to other groups of people.
Trainers library is probably the biggest online platform with learning recourses for trainers and youth workers to develop their competencies according to the European Trainers Competence model (ETS). We have developed a website (www.trainerslibrary.org) with 350 articles written on more than 1500 pages of intellectual output where we use the most relevant literature, past experiences, relevant sources of information and other resources that are based on the non-formal education principles - full of reflections, exercises and other methods. The Trainers library is a multimedia platform, with its social media Facebook page and YouTube channel which should improve the dissemination and multiplication of the knowledge not only in Europe, but across the world. The results so far have been much more than we have initially imagined. The quality of the library is rated on the highest possible level from the people who use it - trainers and youth workers. Our donors, supporters and associate partners have evaluated the library as exceptional and inspiring recourse. More than 300 people took part in the dissemination and multiplication activities, we were testing the articles with selected group of young trainers which show even more promising results. The analytics of the 2 months usage of the library are also very inspiring. More than 2000 users of the library in these two months, with more than 5000 pages viewed and average length of 7 minutes per user, shows us more promising results that we have expected. Even with very small dissemination budget and limited activities, we have managed to have big visibility, which only shows that the content is really quality. We are expecting the engagement to increase after the presentations of the library on the most relevant conferences - Bridges for Trainers - 14-17 November, The 3rd Youth Work Convention - 7-10th of December, Check Point 2020 etc where we continued disseminating the library to the most relevant groups of users. Seeing the potential, we have upgraded the initial plans for the library. It is not the end of this project, but it is just day 1 of it. We expect the library will continue to grow with further contributions from the international community of trainers. We envision that every six months, additional articles are going to be added to the library, filling all the gaps that exist, adding to the variety of tools and approaches, extending the reach of our variety of self-directed learning resources. We want to encourage the innovation and diverse resources from the whole community to continue to grow. We also want to translate the library into many languages. This library would make a big impact on the youth workers and trainers who live in rural areas, who don’t speak English so well or at all, who are not so aware of the international trends and developments in youth work in other parts of the world. We are already in communication with several ministries, language institutes and NAs to figure out how to translate the Library on national level with their support. We know that it is not easy to read 1500 pages of information that require careful contemplation, reflections, try-outs, debates and discussions. Therefore, we have envisioned different forms of media that will further disseminate the learning. We plan to create hundreds of podcast materials that can be downloaded on each smartphone and taken along literally everywhere, as well as educational videos that will be available online on the Trainers’ Library YouTube channel. We expect the development of a community of trainers and youth workers. As we were thinking long terms when we were designing the project and website, the Library provides the opportunity for the creation of forums of debates, editorial policies, questions and answers, and different kinds of support groups. The library has the potential to develop a community of learners who will continue to innovate, develop and spread the knowledge even further and within. Finally, we will be continuously testing the Trainers’ library for its usefulness, impact and learning outcomes. This will allow us to steer its development, learn from the mistakes and continuously improve while keeping the information relevant and up to date.