YMCA Bournemouth

Using international youth work to enhance local youth strategies

Angela Reece, a Youth Manager from YMCA Bournemouth, attended TicTac, a five-day training course in Antalya, Turkey. Angela (pictured below) is part of our Learning Networks community and shared her learning from the course with us. 

What is TicTac?

The TicTac Training Course is an Erasmus+ Transnational Cooperation Activity (TCA) built around long-term strategic planning and project cycle. Including Angela, 28 youth workers from 17 European countries attended. The multilateral course covers international youth work activities as support measures when building a strategic plan and a tool for quality improvement of local youth projects. It is targeted at voluntary and professional youth workers as well as youth leaders who are interested in using international cooperation to enhance their local development strategies in line with the goals of their organisations. Participants are supported in designing qualitative international youth worker mobility activities under the Erasmus+ Programme. 

The facilitators were exceptional in their youth work approach and inspired me to do things differently with my own team - Angela Reece

What are the aims of TicTac?

The overall aim of the TicTac Training Course is to develop participants’ competences for implementing projects within the Erasmus+ Programme, as support measures in an organisation’s long term strategy.

The specific objectives of the course are:

• to promote Erasmus+ as an educational tool;
• to explore Erasmus+ with a special focus on quality international cooperation;
• to understand the role of Erasmus+ within a long term local strategy;
• to simulate the first steps of organising a 'mobility for youth workers' project within an international team;
• to develop participants’ competences in planning non-formal education and intercultural learning processes;
• to promote youth participation and active citizenship as key elements when designing a European project.

What has Angela implemented at YMCA Bournemouth after attending the course?

• She has started working with the YMCA Youth Forum to devise a YMCA Youth Survey to capture young people’s opinions and current needs;
• She has resolved that YMCA Bournemouth needs to continue to use their youth work to develop active citizens and not passive consumers;
• They have scheduled a Youth Strategy Day for the whole department, including the Youth Forum, to explore their priorities and develop a new participation strategy;
• She has retained contact with most of the TicTac participants and has already linked a Spanish youth group to their Fusion youth group in the hope that they may develop a partnership. Angela has also looked at forging connections with two Norwegian youth workers who work with young musicians;
• She has met with YMCA Young Citizen youth workers to suggest ways to improve their summer youth exchange;
• She has proposed to a Spanish youth worker that works with disabled young people to consider sending European volunteers through EVS to YMCA Bournemouth;
• She has offered an Irish BME youth worker the opportunity to shadow them; 
• The organisation has been looking at the potential of developing an Erasmus+ funded youth democracy project between The Chatterboxes and the Youth Service. 

I am confident that Erasmus+ will continue to fund many exciting European projects at YMCA Bournemouth - Angela Reece

Impact of the course

The impact of the TicTac training course on participants:

• exploring Erasmus+ with a special focus on quality international cooperation; 
• understanding the role of Erasmus+ within a long term local strategy; 
• organising a ‘mobility of youth workers’ project in the youth field within an international team; 
• developing competences in planning non-formal education and intercultural learning processes; 
• promoting youth participation and active citizenship as key elements when designing a project.

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