If you would like to see the pictures and profiles of our wonderful trainers, please click here.

The Curriculum Committee (CC) has received 52 applications of highly skilled and experienced individuals from 31 countries. The committee has selected 25 trainers based mainly on quality of the submitted teaching materials, experience in teaching debate, motivation to attend the YF and past experience with Karl Popper and/or the Youth Forum. Additionally the Head of the British Parliamentary Track has chosen 2 trainers to help him to excel with the premiere of the British Parliamentary Track at the Youth Forum. Please see the list of trainers below to see all the names.

The CC has been looking at achieving the right balance between maintaining high quality of debate instruction and reaching diversity of the training team, in terms of geography, program and debate format background and the amount of teaching experience. So this years’ pool has representatives who brought their teams to the top of rankings of the world’s most renowned debate competitions or made it there themselves. It has those that have 20 years of experience teaching debate and also these that showed high potential and achievement in their young carriers so far. The team in general can prove experience with over 15 various debate formats (one could hardly think of any other ones) and geographically it represents the diversity of 5 continents and 18 countries. We believe that this 25 truly represents what IDEA stands for: high quality of education and dialogue of cultures through diversity and inclusiveness.

Dear YF 2008 trainers!

Congratulation once again for making it to the YF pool of trainers! I am very excited to be welcoming you to yet another great YF trainer preparation for some of you or a great new experience for the newbies! I am pleased that the Curriculum Committee has chosen such a great variety of experienced instructors and what seems to be simply awesome bunch of people personality-wise! I am looking forward to working with you in the upcoming months virtually and seeing you in person in summer!

Our preparation will be facilitated via Moodle, an online teaching tool. Please click here to access it!

These pages contain the following:
• brief overview of the preparation process
• materials to check if you have been to the Youth Forum before
• materials to check if you have never been to the Youth Forum - click here

1. WHAT is ahead of us
There are 5 months of work ahead of us and to avoid stressful catching up at last moment I would suggest that we work gradually, so as to be really prepared for the 200 smart, sometimes challenging but inspirational young people.

I. Training of trainers:
• The online phase of training of trainers will take place during april-june
• The face-to-face phase will be taking place from July 21st -23rd

II. At the Youth Forum
• During the KPDC (KP Debate Championship) July 23 – 27: you will be expected to judge. Click here to access the Judging KP debate handbook.
please note that there will be no training done until July 27th. However, I will ask a few of you who have been to the YF last year to help with preparation of teams before the Championship (based on the need – I will keep you informed!).
• training in Tracks (July 27th – August 2nd)– more info on tracks click here
The mixed team track trainers will be additionally paired up with the lab partners (other trainer) later on as we work.

2. I recommend that all the trainers take a look at the YF Newsletters to find out more about the news about this event. You will also be included in the mailinglist for its future issues to keep you updated.

3. For those of you, who are new on the training team please read additionally to the above mentioned materials the crash-course sites. Additionally I would recommend that the trainers absolutely new to the event also read our Idebate Magazine (Volume 8, Issue 1, october 2007 or Volume 7, Issue 1, July 2006 to get accounts from our participants from past YF.

Please download the registration mailings published below, that were sent to each registered person, but might have gotten lost on the way or in your junk mail. They feature vital information on all the things you might possibly want to know about the logistics and last details regarding the YF, if not - the next ones will :)