Moderator Trainings Are Restarting

We developed Mavi Kalem Moderator Trainings, with the aim of disseminating the Girls Empowerment and the Male Participation for the Empowerment of Women Workshop Series to more people. With these trainings, we aim for the participants to gain the competence to implement the workshop series in their own organizations. In this sense, beyond the content of the workshop series, we are trying to convey to the moderator candidates the structure of the workshops that aim to raise awareness based on interaction with the participant. With this aim, we include exercises in which we work on a neutral, enabling mode of communication.

With these aims and objectives, we developed and started implementing moderator trainings in 2019. Until March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, we conducted the moderator trainings of both workshop series twice. In the pandemic conditions, like many organizations, we have entered a process where we adapted our work to the digital environment. In order to adapt the dynamic structure of moderator training, which was shaped on the basis of being together in the physical environment, to the digital environment, it was necessary to rethink and design it. In this process, we came together in digital environment for supervision work, with people who attended moderator trainings in 2019. We talked over Gender, Violence and Communication, topics that form the basis of both workshop series. We also talked about the needs of the participants with regard to the implementation of the workshop series. Participants stated that these meetings were effective not only for the implementation of the worksop series, but for their work as a whole.

With the excitement of the feedback we received, we started working on adapting moderator trainings to the digital environment. What we started talking about in 2020, we completed in the first half of 2021.

Due to participants’ change of location, we had covered the face-to-face trainings in 3 full days. We aim to create a more effective learning experience by spreading the same program over 5 half days in the digital environment. Since both workshop series are implemented with Syrian refugees, the candidates participating in the moderator training must have a good command of the language and culture. It is preferred that at least 2 people from an institution or organization attend the trainings so that they can alternately take part in the roles of moderator and observer in the implementation of the workshop series.

Adapting moderator training to the digital environment does not mean adapting the workshops to the digital environment. Both workshop series are designed for face-to-face implementation. Online trainings aim to make use of the ongoing pandemic conditions to work with candidates who can implement the workshop series.