Asociaţia Tineretului Român Unit  – ASTRU Cluj and Life Zone Estonia in collaboration with EESTEC LC Sarajevo and Young Journalist Centre Moldova (CTJM), organised during 11-18 March 2012, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania the Training Course “Media Sapiens III – Creative Promotional Tools in Youth Work” where 33 young people from 17 member countries of the Council of Europe took part.

The aim of the training course was to raise youth workers’ awareness on using creative promotional tools as form of effective communication with different target groups and stakeholders.

The main objective of this training course is to provide learning opportunity in an intercultural setting for young people interested in being competitive in creation of promotional tools in youth work and follow-up activities. In this way, the participants learned how to create promotional tools, how to plan an event, how to improve communication with own team and with the target group, with the donors and journalists and how to get the attention of local and international media. The most important part were the workshops where participants created websites, blogs, learned to create publications, take pictures, videos and edit them, find out terms to distribute media files over internet and were concerned about ethics in media.

Saturday, 11 March, most of the participants arrived in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, being welcomed by the team of ASTRU Cluj, the project host and by the trainers: Mihai Floran (Project Coordinator, Romania), Codruta Fernea (Romania), Anna Korjakina (Estonia), Denis Rudonja (Bosnia and Hertegovina) and Alina Gîlcă (Republic of Moldova).

During the first day, the official opening took place; participants involved themselves in ice-breaking activities, expressed their fears and expectations about the project, communicated and created a wonderful working atmosphere. Also, in the evening they organized an intercultural night, where everyone had the chance to know more about others’ culture, traditions and specific food or drinks.

Next day, the youth discovered new ways to communicate and interact via online training (webinar) and to improve their knowledge in Social Media and create blogs, Facebook groups, write articles etc., by using media tools learned during the sessions.  In the evening, they discovered the Treasure City of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca and tasted local food in a traditional restaurant in the city.

The third day started with a testimony on the new media and technology called ‘going mobile’ where websites were presented how to be well loaded on mobile phones and also the importance of a Smartphone in our society was presented by Radu and Oana Capan. The session continued with information about new tendencies in digital world and increased frequency of QR codes. The evening was closed with a special experience that the participants had the chance to live in some media institutions from Cluj, like Citynews offices, Agnus radio station and Tele Europa Nova television where some participants were invited for a TV Show.

In the fourth day, the participants developed their imagination in a workshop dedicated to creativity. They found out some secretes of Bluetooth marketing and learned how to appreciate the potential of this instrument. In the same time the fifth day was dedicated to discovering another instrument very useful in promotion which is Guerrilla Marketing.

The trainings were closed with a session of ethics in media following with next projects and partnerships after the ending of this project were new ideas came and a formal and informal evaluation.

Organising this project was possible with the financial help of the European Youth Foundation of the Council of Europe.

For details about this project, please contact ASTRU Cluj over email cluj@astru.ro or phone: +4.0758.677259. Contact person: Mihai Floran.