It was a very interesting and useful experience that opened our eyes and helped us know how much is important the role of a coach in different contexts but first of all in the non-formal one. The course helped us to enhance our coaching skills and explore ways how to support young people act for peace in practice. It was also a good way to understand more and learn tips about online facilitation, in fact we used a lot of online programs and tools that for sure will be useful for our work in SCI.

During the training course, we had the chance of meeting like-minded people from all over the world, willing to make the effort in developing themselves, while helping the community develop too. Immediately a friendly and very positive atmosphere was created, which allowed each participant to intervene and give their opinion. We were divided in different groups with daily tasks, like thinking about evening activities, about energizers, being “heartkeeping” (send nice messages to the people) and thinking about group photo (we made upside down, fruity, funny poses for each of our group pictures), choosing a poem to share with the others.

We got the chance to share our definitions for peace, to exchange practices, introduce each other to different methods and tools and even to take the lead and coach a session! Maybe the Coaching simulation was the most challenging part of the training because it put most of us in a new scenario. The most enriching part of the training was testing the SCI Peace education online course. Not only did we get a chance to gain more in-depth knowledge on different peace related subjects, such as the meaning of peace, its relationship to the environment, migration and culture, but we also got the tools to help in educating others too!

The greatest part of it all is that this online course doesn’t just leave you with the status quo after you got introduced to the topic. It’s full of individual tasks and proposals on how you can teach your peers about these topics too. It’s fun and easy and it shows that anyone can do it!