District Council Youth Educators Complete JustUs Training

Working to specific DCSDC requirements linked to EU's PEACE IV Programme around the need for cross community trainee contact time GMT initially delivered its two day intensive training programme to 16 youth education practitioners in October 2017 and followed this with 3 half day workshop deliveries over the course of 1 year.

This workshop was the third and final part of phase 1 training for this 1st cohort of council supported educators and it was hosted by the teaching staff at Lisneal College, Londonderry.

As this particular workshop represented an end to JustUs training the trainees themselves had decided in advance to make it more about the young people in their care and in particular for those young people who had participated in the JustUs programme over the past year, whether that be in the class room or within a youth work setting.

To that end young people from Lisneal College, Holy Cross College in Strabane and young people from St Columbs Pk House, Derry participated in the workshop and the session seen many of them express their own thinking on the subject areas JustUs explores.

Signific, a number of the young people present also talked very honestly and poignantly about their own experiences of participating in JustUs and of how, in their view the programme had enabled them to have open conversations with their teacher, friends and parents around challenging and controversial subjects. 

Following that the workshop came to a close with a presentation of ‘Facilitating JustUs’ certificates to the successful group of trainees.