Dear trainers,
We are pleased to announce the call for the EFPSA Train Advanced Trainers 2022 Trainers’ Team!
You can find all the information needed in order to apply within this webpage. Please read through it carefully before deciding to apply. Given the amount of content and effort requested for this application, we strongly suggest you not to wait until the last minute to apply.
What is TAT?
EFPSA TAT is a 9-day second-level trainers’ education event, aiming to professionally develop trainers from European youth organisations and beyond. The primary goal of this event is for participants to acquire advanced knowledge on a specifically selected content theme. In addition to that, the goal of the event is to foster networking among young experienced trainers from different non-governmental organisations, as well as other contexts and backgrounds.
The whole learning experience aims to foster long-term learning and knowledge exchange within a community of peers, as well as bigger collaborations among participants and their organisations. The event is open for a selection of talented trainers who want to take their personal and professional competences in training to a higher level – giving an opportunity to exchange knowledge, skills and experiences, and collaborate on establishing evidence-based practices.
Who are we looking for?
5 experienced trainers led by 1 Trainers’ Coordinator selected in the previous call.
When? 17/09/2022-25/09/2022
Where? Croatia*
Topic? Agents of Change – Trainers’ Attitude, ethics of training
Accommodation & Food? Provided free of charge
Travel costs? 100€ reimbursement
Participants? 30 advanced trainers
*Exact location is yet to be announced.
Which topic will it cover this year?
This year’s TAT is titled “Agents of Change – Trainers’ Attitude, Influence and Responsibilities”.
Non-formal education (NFE) has an important role in promoting social matters, such as inclusion of marginalised groups, empowering equality or reducing poverty. In these contexts, soft skill trainers can have a sizable impact on organisational culture, individuals’ beliefs and even society’s as a whole. While we may consider NFE relatively universal, it is highly contextualised and rooted in social and cultural underpinnings.
This edition of TAT is aiming at exploring these underpinnings, discussing trainers’ ethics, improving awareness of their potential to have an impact, as well as developing an appropriate attitude, given the influence they hold. It further aims at developing a training culture of curiosity, self-criticism, continuous learning and self-improvement. We will view training not only as a process of learning, but also as a process of societal improvement, advocacy and policy making. The purpose of such a learning experience is to enable trainers to act as agents of social change, while also being up to date with the state of the art approaches in NFE.
Responsibilities of the Trainers’ Team
Being a trainer at TAT means (pro)actively providing a 9-months hybrid learning experience to the participants (between mid June 2022 and mid March 2023), including approximately 3 months of pre-event preparatory tasks, the 9-days event itself and approximately 6 months of post-event active follow-up. The main tasks of the Trainers’ Team, among others, are the following:
Pre-event tasks:
- reliably and efficiently communicating and cooperating online (2 or more Zoom calls per month pre-event, 1-2 calls per month post-event)
- defining the goals, flow and schedule/timeline of both the event and the entire learning experience
- establishing selection criteria and selecting participants
- assessing, analysing and addressing participant’s learning and developmental needs and goals
- doing profound research on the theme of the event in order to provide evidence-based content to participants
- designing the event and the comprehensive learning experience
- partially preparing handouts of sessions
- facilitating (online) participants’ pre-event preparation (e.g. online getting-to-know-each-other, online training sessions, etc.)
During event tasks:
- finalising the design of sessions according to unexpected changes and the space of the event
- adapting and preparing the spaces for the needs of the event
- providing an outstanding learning experience to the participants while delivering core content sessions
- fostering the spaces for participants’ contributions
- providing a reflective and supportive environment where a small group of participants can plan, explore, and deepen their learning and emotional processes throughout the event, by hosting a Reflection Group
- managing the group process and co-creating a safe learning environment
Post-event tasks:
- reliably and efficiently communicating and cooperating online to finalise handouts, evaluate the event and learning, provide follow-up, etc.
- finalising reports and high quality evidence-based handouts of all sessions delivered
- facilitating the process of collecting all of the insights and ideas generated during TAT, and merging them with the official and unofficial handouts to publish a TAT Handbook
- providing active (online) state-of-the-art follow-up to participants (e.g. online training sessions, challenges, social meet-ups, etc.)
- actively working to integrate both, the people and knowledge from TAT2022 into The Hive (community of TAT graduates)
Selection Criteria
EFPSA TAT is a high quality event aiming to develop advanced trainers. We are thus looking for a highly competent, experienced and motivated Trainers’ Team in order to bring out the full potential of the event. The applications will be evaluated according to the following selection criteria:
- you personally relate to the vision of TAT and you are highly motivated to be part of its creation
- you have deep and evidence-based knowledge on this year’s topic and/or are willing to invest time to research the topic
- you have received sound trainers’ education and you (preferably) have several years of experience working internationally and with different youth organisations
- you have prior experience working in a team that designed, delivered and evaluated an international training event of at least one week, and/or feel comfortable and competent to do so
- you are available and willing to invest time in the entire comprehensive 9-month learning experience, including online preparation of participants, the event and follow-up
- you are available for all required virtual collaboration prior and after the event
- you can be physically (and otherwise) present with training delivery, activities facilitation, possibly coaching, and any other tasks during the entire event
- you are willing to actively support the development of The Hive after the event
Application requirements
In order for you to apply, we ask you to provide us with four components as part of the application:
1) Motivation letter (between 500 and 1000 words)
Besides your general motivation for being a trainer at TAT, please outline how you relate to the topic of this year’s edition and what your experience is with it, as a trainer, activist or beyond. Please save your letter as a .pdf file named TATtrainerapplication_[NameSurname]_motivationletter
2) Training portfolio
Share with us your Training portfolio, a list of all experiences of designing and delivering workshops, training sessions, events, etc. Please structure this in an Excel spreadsheet – you can find a template here, although you can use your own template, as long as it contains all the required information (see template columns). Please save the portfolio as an .xls file named TATtrainerapplication_[NameSurname]_portfolio
3) Research & Design
In this part of the application, your goal is to design a training session for trainers to learn a new skill.
There are four topics that you can choose from:
- Advocacy & policy (how can we, as trainers, act as advocates and agents of social change; how can we help co-create better policies)
- Diversity & inclusion (how can we be inclusive in our training sessions / events in terms of both content and process; how can we challenge aversion to diversity and instead showcase its benefits and opportunities)
- NFE as social intervention (how to foster learning communities in marginalised groups; how to de-marginalise groups through NFE)
- The ethical and culturally aware trainer (how can we be more ethical, how can we set ethical standards of NFE; how can we be aware of the cultural biases of content and processes we use in NFE, how can we counter these biases.)
Design a session outline of one of the four topics listed above. You can base it on your own “boots-on-the-ground” experience, but make sure to also make it informed by research – read at least 3 scientific (Google Scholar and SciHub are your friends here) articles or other relevant resources (WHO, UN and EU reports) that provide you with evidence-based information on the topic of your choice. Use at least one of these resources when designing the session outline.
The hypothetical scenario you are designing for: your participants are a mixed group of approximately 30 fellow trainers from different NGOs, with varying levels of experiences; duration of session between 4 and 8 hours. You can make up any other information (about the audience or other circumstances) you might need. Keep in mind that this session outline does not have to be perfect – we’re interested in your ideas, the gist of the goals, content and activities you have in mind. Please save the outline named TATtrainerapplication_[NameSurname]_outline – choose the file format you see fit to present your ideas best.
4) The Application Form
Please fill out the application form, through which we collect your personal data required for the application process, as well as further information about you as a trainer.
When all three attachments are ready, and you have filled the form, send the attachments via email to trainingevents@efpsa.org not later than the 24th of June 2022, 12:00 pm CEST. Note that only complete applications will be taken into consideration.
If your application is considered for the second round, we will invite you for a 30-45 minute Zoom meeting. You will be continuously notified about the status of your application. Final results are expected latest by the 25th of June 2022, followed by the first team meeting on that weekend.
For any clarifications and suggestions, do not hesitate to contact us at the above email address.