From Learners to Facilitators: Eight Days in Smolnik

From 5-12 November 2025 at Smolnik Youth Home in the Pohorje hills, thirty youth workers and educators gathered for an Erasmus-supported training led by Jošt Kozelj and Petra Jazbec, co-facilitators with nine years of experience across national and international events. Participants came from Bulgaria, Italy, Serbia, France, Germany, Spain, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, and the Netherlands and returned home with clearer facilitation identities, practical tools, and accountability partners to keep the learning alive.

The programme opened with shared intentions, common agreements, and a guiding question that shaped the week: who am I as a facilitator, and who do I want to become? A midweek highlight, graphic facilitation, began with the invitation “we all know how to draw” and moved into simple visual languages: frames, readable text and basic shapes that make complex ideas easy to follow. Public speaking and presence work, the facilitation triangle of results, process and relationships, and embodied reflection practices from Authentic Movement to quiet walk-and-talks in the forest linked skill with self-awareness. Each day concluded with structured reflection so that insights could settle before the next step.