18 Dec 1st edition of the BePart training: online and successful
The BePart training for teachers was initially due to be hosted by Platoniq in Barcelona in mid-June 2020. However, 2020 was an unusual year: the Covid-19 pandemic changed all plans. Resilience was perhaps the main attitude that last year taught us, and the online dimension has been our collective response to go ahead with our projects and meetings. The BePart project has also adapted to the situation and, consequently, the training was moved to an online format.
Twelve teachers from the four partner schools and nine experts were involved in the capacity building programme that took place during November and December 2020. The training was split into asynchronous work, which included readings, activities to carry out with students and questionnaires, and four online workshops.
Throughout the online sessions, all the participants were challenged to reflect and contribute with their insights on the training key topics: youth participation, facilitation and co-creation, implementation of the models of youth participation, risk assessment, and communication. The result was the construction of collective knowledge, that was enriched by the experts’ view and proposed readings.
As a part of the autonomous work, teachers were invited to carry out workshops with their students. The proposed activities aimed to identify “hot topics” that were alive in each school, as well as support students to understand and express the most important needs of their community, stimulating them to become more aware of their collective problems. The output of these workshops has clarified and established the basis for the participatory processes that are just beginning in schools.
Although the relational dimension is hard to achieve in an online format, teachers found motivation especially when sharing the activities carried out with their students. So much so that schools expressed the willingness of both teachers and students to meet further and share their experiences with the other school partners. This synergy has led to the convening of the first student’s international meeting to be held in mid-February.
Another interesting result from the capacity building programme has been the launch of the BePart training platform (bepart.platoniq.net), which hosts a resources page that includes, in addition to the BePart publications, a toolbox with all the activities carried out during the training as well as the proposed workshops to carry out with students.
Finally, the trainers have highlighted the benefits that the online format has brought to this training, and recommend to take them into account when (or if) the situation returns to “normality”. In this sense, they underline the added value of hybrid processes and training, which can take advantage of both face-to-face and online formats.