Dear readers,

It is time again to tell you what I made the last weeks and I will do the following weeks. The last weeks I was creating Youthpasses for the participants who took place in the Step 2 training course in Benediktbeuern. On my opinion it is very good for them to get such a certificate because they can also use it to apply for a job. With the personal description of the key competences the participants learned during the training course everybody can see which development the individuals could go through.

Because the training course was funded by the ‘Youth in Action'-Programme we could reimburse 70% of the travel cost of the participants. I was working on this reimbursement and could have an overview of the financial part of this project. For my studies it is very important to have a connection between praxis and theory to build up a professional working style. Therefore I am reading the T-Kits published from the European Commission and the Council of Europe. These T-Kits are very interesting and helpful for making the praxis clearer.

The T-Kits:

- Training Essentials

• This T-Kit addresses itself to trainers working within a European framework. It proceeds by assuming that they will be working with a multicultural group and team, in an activity that demands careful planning and input from them, and in training situations which pose a range of personal and professional questions.

- Intercultural learning

• some ways of looking at the context and importance of intercultural learning,

• summaries of some of the theories which we find helpful in understanding the bases for intercultural learning,

• tips for working out intercultural methodologies,

• a selection of different types of relevant methods,

• models of how to run thematic workshops,

• suggestions for going further,

• an evaluation form (as your feedback will be most important in working on future editions)

- Educational Evaluation in Youth Work

• Nevertheless, this T-Kit is not a recipe book on evaluation methods that can be automatically transferred into your activities. Rather, it is an educational and methodological tool to help you to naturally develop, integrate and improve educational evaluation in your youth work. Concrete experiences and existing practices of evaluation as developed in practical youth work in Europe will serve us as reference material.

The Dutch course which a started in March draws to a close and I will have my exams on the 17.06. and 21.06. It was a very nice opportunity to learn the language and to meet new friends.

Martina Finck