DWARS Academy

The DWARS Academy is the place for your education! Do you want to improve your political skills or learn how to hold meetings better? The Academy trains you in these, as well as many other things.

What is the DWARS Academy?

The DWARS Academy is the trainer pool of DWARS. The Academy consists of DWARSers who enjoy providing training to other DWARSers. This is how we contribute to DWARS as a political school of learning.

How does the DWARS Academy work?

The DWARS Academy consists of a group of DWARSe trainers and is coordinated by one or more training coordinators. The board member with the Training portfolio is responsible for the Academy. Currently Deniz Sözeri and Anne Wentink (academy@dwars.org) Academy coordinators.

Departments, committees and other bodies within DWARS can request training courses from the Academy using the form below. Within the Academy, applications are distributed. One or two trainers take on the application. They will then keep in touch with the applicant, and will deliver the training.

The Academy now has a large number of existing training courses. When applying, you can choose from these training courses. But you can always ask for a training course that does not yet exist. Also, trainers will always adapt the training to suit your needs.

Who is the DWARS Academy for?

Departments, committees and all other bodies within DWARS can request training courses from the DWARS Academy. Trainings can be provided to all groups of DWARSers. For example, to a department board, but also at an activity for all members of a department.

Who are the trainers?

The trainers at the Academy are all also DWARSers. Often they are members who have been members for some time, and are happy to continue sharing their experiences with a new generation of members.

"Nothing is more fun than passing on what you have learned from DWARSers to new DWARSers" - Sander, trainer at the Academy

How do people experience the DWARS Academy trainings?

"From the trainings by the DWARS Academy, I have learnt a lot in an approachable way to apply inside and outside DWARS. Because the trainings are given by other DWARSers, the trainings feel like a nice environment where everything can be asked and where, besides learning, the atmosphere and sociability are important." - Rose, DWARSer

Contact

For all your questions about the Academy and the training sessions we provide, please email Deniz Sözeri and Anne Wentink at academy@dwars.org. The responsible board member for the DWARS Academy is Luc Goos (luc@dwars.org)

Overview of training courses

Activism: How do you make sure your activism is effective? In this training you will learn from inspiring examples, dissect how to make actions part of a broad strategy and what all you need to think about when preparing an action.

Organising activities: Are few people coming to your activities, or do you keep failing to arrange everything the way you wanted? Learn how to set up a good activity, prepare it and how to get people enthusiastic about your event.

Writing policy plan: A clear policy plan with good planning will ensure that you get much more done. Learn how to write a policy plan and how to make sure your plans are actually realised.

Campaigning: How do you get from a topic to a campaign? How do you make sure your message really reaches people? Learn how to set up a campaign and engage effectively with others.

Debating: Do you want to become the new Obama but often can't get out of your words? Learn how to prepare a debate, boost your confidence and deliver your message with passion.

Diversity and inclusion:

Effective meetings: Meetings are often draining: they are long and nothing gets decided. Learn how to make better decisions in a shorter time so that everyone goes home (or drinks) feeling good.

Giving and receiving feedback: DWARS is a learning school, and that includes making mistakes. But how do you help others learn from their mistakes? And how do you handle feedback yourself? Learn how to formulate good feedback, and how best to receive feedback.

Core qualities and pitfalls: Do you want to develop yourself further? Get to know your own qualities and pitfalls and make a concrete plan of action for your most important development wish.

Member recruitment & member retention: Does your committee or department have few members, or do people drop out quickly? And how do you recruit new members? Learn how to increase the number of active members in the short term and how to retain members.

Leadership: Do you want to further develop yourself as a leader? Learn what leadership is, discover your own leadership style and make a plan to grow into the leader you want to be.

Media and/or Media Spokesperson: Do you find it difficult to seek out media? Do you not know what to say when called by a newspaper? Do you find it difficult to get your story across? Then this training is for you! During DWARS's media spokesperson training course you will learn the basics of media spokesperson. You will learn how media work, how to formulate a message concisely, how to write press releases and you will work on speaking techniques. Do you still have questions or want to focus on something else? That's always possible.

Negotiation & persuasion: In politics, you achieve nothing on your own: every decision is preceded by negotiations. Learn how to make compromises that work in your favour, and convince everyone that you are right.

Working together: Do you still find leadership difficult, or do you want to improve cooperation within your team? Learn through concrete cases how your attitude can improve the atmosphere and performance within your team.

Social media: Just can't seem to reach your target audience, or want to start a new page? Learn which channel to use for which message, and increase your reach on social media.

Apply: Do you find it difficult to present yourself, or fail to write a good cover letter? Learn how to go through a job application process confidently and successfully.

Storytelling and presenting: Do you have great ideas and big ideals, but fail to captivate people? Learn how to engage people with an inspiring story and a strong presentation.

Team building: Have you just started as a new board or committee? Do you want to make a good start and get to know each other well and be better attuned to each other? Then a team-building session might be for you.

Time-management: Too many things you want to do, but keep running out of time? Learn how to clearly prioritise, plan and keep an overview.