The International Youth Work Trainers Guild are coming together for the next five days in Payerbach (Austria) for Youth Trainers Reboot. This new seminar is multi-purpose and brings together participants from 16 partner countries, funded through Erasmus+ and hosted by coobra – cooperativa braccianti.

The expert seminar aims to gather international youth work trainers together in order to discuss and find new ways of responding to the needs of youth work and young people under the current realities and trends in Europe. We will also seek to critically reflect our practices considering the actual impact (and lack thereof) of non-formal education, unconscious bias in our work, and dealing with failures. Further inputs will be provided by external experts from the business sector and psychology.

Attached to the seminar will be the Annual General Meeting of the International Youth Work Trainers Guild and findings from the initial expert inputs will have an impact and be reflected in the work plan of the Guild for 2017/18.

Yesterday evening participants for the seminar were arriving in Payerbach with some still to step off the train into the beautiful surroundings of the Austrian mountains later today. Last night the participants began to learn about one another with a short exercise finding out three unique things about other participants (because three is the magic number) which will be revisited throughout the seminar week.

Today’s programme will see the participants introduced to the programme, get to know one another some more and then begin with the sessions. The topics for day one will be about mapping reality in the context of young people, non-formal education, youth trainers and building the community of trainers.

Return to the blog later today to follow the journey that the participants go on this week.