Educational support material - Nonformal educational activities HRYO EN | Page 3

Introduzione What we intend to formulate in this short guide is a small orien- tation path for those who intend to approach non-formal educa- tion pathways; often who approaches this world, sometimes even receiving project approvals, considers non-formal education as a set of childish games sustaining the learning process. Often people tend to mistake non-formal learning with informal lear- ning and vice-versa. For those who want to approach education, it must be very clear that human dynamics are influenced by so many causes, both internal and external. Every sentient being experiences learning during daily life dynamics, these are exactly the dynamics that must be recognized in order to reach the re- sults that each educator seeks to achieve. Non-formal education is an ancient method, refined over the years, which has the pe- culiarity to be developed mainly by its end-user. In order to allow young people to be protagonists of their learning, however, it is necessary to know the method really well in order to stimulate such dynamics. To do so,at first you must destabilize the lear- ners’ approach, to stimulate curiosity, to provide them with the means to develop this path, and finally to foster the recognition process of the acquired skills. Therefore we will try to provide a brief distinction between the different types of education and finally describe one of the most well-known tools for the recognition of skills, the “YouthPass”. We will try to explain better these aspects by using as an example a project realized by H.R.Y.O. Human Rights Youth Organization and finally, we will show in detail some of the non-formal activi- ties we have conceived and developed over the last few years in several projects with many young people coming from different countries. 3