written by Nika Gojanović and Selma Purić
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” (A. Lincoln)
This quote, in our opinion, perfectly portrays that if you want to do something for the people, it needs to be done by the people, not you. In the wish to transmit knowledge or skills, educators, facilitators and trainers sometimes overlook this. What is their purpose then, you might ask? One could see them as a kind of “coordinators” – people whose role is making sure that there are no obstacles in the learning process and giving people the opportunity to access knowledge and skills without forcing it on them. So, to help them coordinate their own personal learning whilst providing them with new methods, tools, etc. In order to be able to do this, besides humbling oneself, one firstly needs to learn about what goes into being a trainer and the theoretical aspect of it. Therefore, we decided to participate in a training for trainers.
The T4T in Peace Education, organised in Uppsala, has been our first training for trainers. There, we got to dive into what a trainer is from the basics, what it actually even means, all the way to trying to be in the role of a trainer ourselves. We have gained a much better understanding of the needed competencies and skills in order to become a trainer. Furthermore, developing a new method in a team with Sevgi from Turkey gave us the opportunity to test that knowledge on the spot. As our training was about peace education, we connected the right to education with dyslexia and have based our activity on that topic. The simulation of our method was both exciting and gratifying, as we could see in person if what we have imagined works in reality. The other participants and our trainer Gabi shared their feedback with us, enabling us to improve our method even more. So, on this training for trainers, our learning went full-circle and we feel as if we are leaving with a workshop concept that we are passionate about as well as with the skills to implement it in a real-life environment.
So, was our idea of what a trainer is still the same after finishing this training for trainers? Yes and no. We still believe that a good trainer works for the sake of the people by helping and supporting the personal learning that they do by themselves. However, our concept of “people” in the context of training has been expanded immensely – a trainer is supported by other trainers, junior trainers, even the participants and their feedback, passion and motivation, toolkits with numerous methods, etc. Being a trainer is being a drop in a huge ocean of learning that you get the privilege to navigate, but from which you also get to learn and to which all the drops contribute. So, we are grateful for all the support we have gotten from the extremely knowledgeable trainer Gabi, all the participants, receiving organisation Föreningen Fredens Hus på Uppsala slott and our sending NGO, Association Strive. We couldn’t have asked for a better start of our journey as trainers.
Participants: Nika Gojanović and Selma Purić
Organizer: Fredens Hus, Uppsala
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