REGIONAL PACIFIC
Connecting Cultures, Inspiring Futures
T4T Award Building Pacific Youth Partnerships The International Award is an exciting self-development programme for young people worldwide aged between 1425yrs to gain leadership skills, build confidence and help them engage with their communities. The award began in the UK, where it is also known as the Duke of Edinburgh. Over the past 50 years it has spread across the globe because both its’ philosophy and format, have provided attractive and adaptable to many different cultures. To date, over seven million people have participated in the International Award programme and now it operates in over 140 countries and territories.
Photos: Courtesy of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Association
To further build the capacity of Pacific countries to deliver the International Award to a greater number of people, the Asia Pacific Regional Office recently delivered a Training for Trainers (T4T) workshop at the Pacific Theology College in Suva, Fiji between the 16th – 18th July. A range of youth workers, peer educators and experienced award leaders from the Pacific Youth Council (PYC) came from countries all over the Pacific to take part, including; Palau, Kiribati, New Zealand, Niue, Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and the Marshall Islands. Valeriano Kwany is one of the coordinators of the Youth-to-Youth (YTY) and T4T Award Programs in the Solomon Islands, shared with us some of the benefits and challenges involved in achieving the award. The T4T program allows youth workers to “gain a qualification for future self-employment where they can learn management skills, build selfconfidence and be supported by a network of other positive young role models and leaders,” said Valeriano. He also described one of the challenges for the participants successfully completing the program is to, “work voluntarily to build a service to others whilst also working with limited funding and resources. “ He further explained in order to implement and sustain their individual programs (especially in regional areas), they are required to work independently to self-manage their projects within their communities. The 3 day T4T workshop facilitated networking and collaboration and provided participants with the tools to be able to design and run successful training events for youth groups in their country. The program will further be used to build pacific island training panels and develop a pool of experienced trainers in the Pacific who will:
Know – frameworks for building training programmes for a variety of needs and audiences
Feel – confident to travel nationally to deliver award leader training workshops in the pacific
Do- practice and get feedback on their training design and delivery skills 20