Youth Outdoor Leadership Academy is a strategic partnership project, which consists of 3 partner organisations - Outward Bound Slovakia, Dive Maky- Slovakia, EDUMA - Slovakia and UWC Red Cross Nordic - Norway. The project aims to transfer know-how and good practices in order to create an innovative personal development program, which will be implemented in Slovakia. The program will focus on increasing competencies and knowledge of youth workers in working with non-formal and experiential education methods. The trained youth workers and trainers will continue working with youth as part of the project activities. The activities, where youth will be involved, will be focused on development of leadership skills. In the project there will be included also a group of youth from disadvantaged background, who will be positively impacted in the way that they will be engaged in activities which will help to develop their social skills and self-awareness. The project activities will be the following: 1. Transnational Kick off meeting 2. Training of mentors in Norway 3. Experiential program for the future young leaders 4. Leadership training for young leaders pt.1 5. Leadership training for young leaders pt.2 (includes planning and preparation for the peer to peer program) 6. Program for the youth participants (from disadvantaged background), which the young leaders will execute under the supervision of the youth workers and trainers. 7. Evaluation training for the trainers 8. Transnational evaluation meeting for the project coordinators, focused on the organisational level 9. Creating a methodology pack for youth workers, leaders and people working with experiential education methodology 10. Mentorship provided by the mentor organisation throughout the whole duration of the project The main methodology, which will be used during most of the activities for this project will be experiential education, involving different outdoor activities. The project will be supervised by UWC Nordic, who are already working with similar methodology and have their own outdoor education department. The results, which we are expecting to achieve are the following: 1.Transfer of know how to Slovakia 2. Developing capacities of the involved organisations 3. Creating an innovative program for developing leadership competencies of youth 4. Creating a Pool of youth mentors 5. Involvement of young people through developing of their skills and competencies 6. Involvement of young people in peer to peer learning as leaders 7. Involvement of youth from disadvantaged background in experiential education activities 8. Creation of a methodology pack The long term results from this project would be the increasing of quality of youth work, increasing the capacities of the organisations involved, increasing employability of young people and spreading know-how on how to work with experiential education methodology. The pool of 14 trained youth workers will continue implementing the methods, which they have been trained in during the project, in their work with youth.
The main aim of the project was to create an innovative personal development program. The program focused on increasing the competencies and knowledge of youth workers and trainers in working with non-formal and experiential education methods. The project also focused on the development of communication skills, problem-solving, working with others, leadership skills, and perseverance of young people including also young people from disadvantaged environments (foster care). Youth Outdoor Leadership Academy empowered the youth to practice being in a leadership role and create peer-to-peer learning experiences. We believe that the developed leadership skills are transferable to other settings, such as community building & work, local youth projects etc.
Youth Outdoor Leadership Academy was a project that brought organizations from different European countries together in order to learn from each other and has a positive impact on a few different levels: 1.On the involved organizations 2.On the staff from the involved organizations 3.Young people, who had an opportunity to become young leaders 4. Youth from disadvantaged backgrounds. Through the Youth Outdoor Leadership Academy, we shared know-how and good practices, which helped us to develop the capacities and expertise of the involved organizations. During this project, UWC Red Cross Nordic addressed different needs relating to their current Outdoor Leadership Programme, especially exchanging ideas about possible upscaling and transfer into other national educational systems. Outward Bound Slovakia had an opportunity to provide high-quality training to trainers who already had some experience and needed new inspiration and motivation for further self-development. EDUMA and Dive Maky gained more experiences with non-formal education in an outdoor environment for their team and used the project to explore how they can incorporate it into their programs.