This year’s International Tool Fair gathered a community of around 150 persons with various backgrounds like youth workers, youth leaders, educators, trainers, and teachers, interested in sharing, transferring and adapting educational tools in the frame of non-formal learning.
There was a variety of activities, workshops, talks in order for the participants at the Tool Fair to:
- share about, learn and reflect on how to apply competences and education of youth workers on different levels and in different contexts to one’s own reality.
- shar knowledge, being challenged, getting inspired and critically reflecting on youth policy, research and studies of youth work and society.
- exploring, learning from and supporting further development of practice and methods of working with young people.
- engaging, connecting and experiencing youth work in context, while linking practice to local reality.
The core topics tackled by this edition of the ITF cover different aspects of Sustainability like:
- Sustainable project management
- Sustainability and education
- Sustainability and climate change
- Sustainability and equality
- Sustainability and poverty
Moreover, tools (intellectual outputs) conceived within strategic partnership for innovation projects were enhanced. With this intent, practices coming from the world of formal and vocational education were also valued, to create cross-sectoral bridges between the different sectors of education dealing with youth and more specifically with:
- Reduce inequality and poverty in our society
- Climate related actions
- Sustainability and education
The programme was full with very interesting activities, so when choosing was quite hard, but my personal favorite were some workshops about how to GREEN up the youth projects, the Talk given by Anita Silva about sustainability or the practical compensation activity, where with a part of the participants we planted trees with the students of a Vocational school in the National Park of Calanques. The event was a part of the European Year of Youth and we had the pleasure to have Mrs. Sarah El Haïry , French Youth Secretary of State, to close the ITF.
You can find more information about the event here
This was a true learning experience, not to mention all the contacts and follow-up collaborations in the years to come. If you have the opportunity, I strongly encourage you to check for next years’ edition that will be hosted by Ireland.
Reporting for Views News, Anca DAVID
