Two weekends ago, from 3-6 of March, the Trainers' Forum took place in Vienna. This event, organized by BEST, is aimed at gathering trainers from different international youth organizations to share trainers' experiences, best practices and materials. In the weekend there were almost 100 trainers and more than 15 organizations present. There were even two guys flying in from Canada to represent their association! It was an amazing weekend, being part of a group with so much potential and so much passion for the same thing: training.The program beforehand was basically empty. When so many passionate trainers are gathered together, it would be a waste not to use their experience. For the first day everybody could send in topics before the event for a workshop or training that they would like to give. The second and third day were entirely devoted to the OST: Open Space Technology. This meant that there was no program, we spontaneously made it on the morning of the second day and during the two days. On both days we had discussions. All the discussions were centered around the general topic of 'How can we assure the quality of the training and the trainers' development'. All the participants could think of a topic, write it on a paper and put it in the big schedule on the wall. At the end of the event, 67 topics were discussed and all the results were gathered in a wiki.
One of the topics that was discussed was about the ethics of a trainer. A lot of effort was put into writing an ethical code for all trainers untill the discussion got stuck at the question about the ethics of starting a relationship with a participant. Another example of a discussion was about debriefing after a training, how to properly debrief and how to teach debriefing at a T4T. There were even two ideas for starting a company that evolved from the discussions!
Beside the many discussions, there was a TEDx-like evening where seven trainers told a personal story or something they wanted to let the others think about. One of the speakers was our own Kamila, she gave an inspiring talk about Fear. Of course there were also parties and
alcohol and a lot of opportunities to get to know the other associations and their training systems. It was an inspiring event where I personally learned to see AEGEE in a different perspective and got a lot of new ideas on how to improve the Academy. Being part of this world of trainers was a new experience for me and I learned a lot from it. Next year it will be organized again, so don't hesitate to apply when you see the open call for participants coming by!
