Concrete objectives: We set out to develop and test a two-tier education program for volunteers and professionals working to empower vulnerable groups to become more capable and willing to engage with their communities. The program is based on outputs from another Erasmus+-funded project called Hosting Empowerment (2020-1-DE02-KA204-007737), namely a self-empowerment booklet for vulnerable groups, or fewer opportunities groups, called ‘Innertopia’. Development of the training: * Tier 1: The Coach Training program teaches actual or potential convenors of peer support groups, and other interested volunteers, to lead and guide such a peer group through a collective empowerment process. * Tier 2: The Trainer Training program enables professional trainers to design and deliver the Tier 1 program, thus creating capacity to continue to train more coaches.
Long-term ambition: Better inclusion and empowerment of vulnerable groups (fewer opportunities groups) as active participants in their own lives and in society, in particular by making it easier for convenors of peer support groups to empower group members, both individually and collectively, also to self-advocate for inclusion. Expressed needs of the partners: All partners expressed an individual need for creating the program, as stated in the application under the question “How does the project address the needs and goals of the participating organisations and the identified needs of their target groups?”. In summary, all partners were looking for a way to complement their endeavours for empowering their specific target groups. After completing the “Hosting Empowerment” project (2020-1-DE02-KA204-007737), which has produced the basic material which we used in this project, it was a logical step to start training people to use the material.