Cyprus


Local training course in Pissouri, Cyprus

18 to 21 June 2026

Taking place just 2 months after the original training course in Romania, the 4-day local training began in Hylatio tourist Village in Pissouri, Cyprus on Thursday, June the 18th, 2026. Throughout the duration of the project the 5 organizations present in the local training were Polychoros Voroklinis from Larnaca, SKE Pissouriou from Pissouri, Bright Steps from Limassol, AYCEU from Nicosia as well as Lykeio Apostolou Louka Kolossiou. 

Day 1 – Thursday June 18, 2026

Introductions, audits and visual identities

The morning began with short icebreaking activities in order for all participants representing different organizations or informal groups to get to meet each other. This was by design, as the local training in the following days did aspects where partners check out each other's social media presence, post formats and more.

The first icebreaking focused on throwing toilet paper to each other, introducing our names and where we come from, while the second one was slightly more humors. Participants were asked, using the toilet paper, to pick how much toilet paper they use when going to the bathroom. The twist was that for each toilet paper piece participants picked, they had to tell one fun fact about themselves.

As for the last icebreaking activity, participants wrote down 2 truths and 1 lie, and going around, speaking to other participants they had to guess which one was the truth and which was the lie.

Upon entering back to the activity room, trainers Michalis, Stevi and Bobbie gave a rundown to the original training course that took place back in Romania in late April.

After coffee break, we jumped straight into the topic with the Digital Audit. As taught to the Cypriot youth workers back in Romania, Bobbie explained the importance of digital audits the 6 key aspects of doing an audit of organizations. As originally, these were the following –

Mission Clarity - Is it immediately clear who we are and what we do?

Visual Coherence - Are logos, colors and branding consistent?

Youth Relevance - Does the content feel attractive and meaningful to young people?

Content Consistency - Do we post regularly and maintain a recognizable style?

Call to Action - Is it clear what we want visitors to do next?

Internal Capacity - Do we have the people, time and resources to manage communication?

Participants them conducted a digital audit on their own organizations, checking out their own websites, social media channels and more to see what is working and what is not.

Ultimately, participants understood that a digital audit is not about finding mistakes, but instead it is about discovering opportunities for improvement and increasing impact.

After lunch break participants returned to focus on understanding Youth Persona's, and therefore in turn the NGO Target Audience.

Focusing on creating 3 "groups" of people that each organization focuses on, each person created a character based on the following factors

  • A sample name

  • Age and their context

  • Barriers they may face

  • Platforms they probably use

  • Message style

  • Call to action they respond to

Trainer Michalis focused on explain each of these aspects to the present participants, at which point participants created 3 types of personas, in three different categories.

For example, SKE Pissouriou, registered and maintaining aspects of Pissouri generally has 3 types of persons.

Using SKE Pissouriou as an example, participants identified three distinct target personas. The first represented young people who may face challenges associated with living in a rural area. The second focused on young adults aged 18–30, while the third represented older participants who engage in educational projects but may not necessarily speak English. In the case of SKE Pissouriou, this third group also includes members of the local Ukrainian and Russian-speaking communities. As such, an often unexpected or neglected platform would be Telegram, popular in East Europe.

Through this exercise, participants gained a deeper understanding of the importance of identifying and analyzing the different personas their organizations engage with. This in turn changes the method of communication, message style and even the call to action they most respond to.

After the last coffee break, with trainer Stevi taking the helm, Stevi gave a rundown of what makes a good logo and what does not, including focusing on –

Simplicity – easy to recognize and to remember, and even to sketch!

Scalable – looks good and is recognizable both when its small, or on different types of backgrounds

Timeless – stands the test of time and won't look outdated in the future

After participants tested our recreating the logos of each present organization, participants then went on create Instagram templates. Trainer Stevi explained the specific constraints on Instagram (meaning how posts can only be square, or 4:3 or 4:5 aspect ratio) and went on to explain the visual identity system. This means for example

Until the rest of the day participants tested out different logo styles and templates.

Dinner took place in Pissouri square to celebrate the first day at Παραδοσιοκρατία Γεύσεων/Paradosiokratia Geuseon.

Day 2 – Friday June 19, 2026

The day began with a showcase of each organization re-imagined logos as well as template styles that fits with the branding, values and beliefs of each organization.

As such, the next activity focused on the dos and don'ts of posts, but much more importantly, the specific tool of metricool for both post planning and better measurement and management.

Bobbie explained the importance of using professional dashboards where brands like Meta already offer for Facebook or Instagram, and how data is always more important than guesswork. For example, as ACPELIA works alongside Lykeio Apostolou Louka Kolossiou, it was expected that the most popular time would be around 6:00 pm, where kids are most active on social media, but instread the times from 10pm to 1 am appeared to be the best times to post.

Bobbie presented ACPELIA's own professional dashboard and certain unexpected facts about ACPELIA's data, such as the fact that there is significant engagement from Poland, possibly due to the amount of organizations from Poland ACPELIA works with. This, for example, is one of the reasons that ACPELIA posts in English and not Greek.

To test out Metricool, participant Erma's life coaching page was used, @ermageorgiou_relationshipcoach. While unexpected it was found that people interested in relationship content were far more likely to engage with her content at 10am in the morning, and almost never on weekends.

After coffee break, participants jumped straight into landing page development. Trainer Stevi troduced the key principles behind creating effective landing pages and explained how the design, structure, and content of a webpage should always reflect the goals and target audiences of the organization behind it, while following the color codes that participants worked on the previous day. Particular attention was also given to accessibility and inclusiveness, ensuring that webpages can be easily understood and used by people from different backgrounds, age groups, and language communities.

Each organization tried recreating the webpage that already exists and for certain informal groups (such as bright steps or AYCEU) the groups created potential landing pages based on the values, beliefs of these informal groups.

After lunch break participants went ahead to present the landing pages they created to others, involving the newly reimaged logos.

Participants noticed not only the differences from the original webpages of these organizations, but just as importantly, the differences between each other's organizations. This was by design, as as chol that also does Erasmus projects differs quite a bit than for example SKE Pissouri, which is closely tied to municipal work of Pissouri itself.

We then moved on trying out Marky AI, a powerful content creation and social media management tool designed to help organizations streamline their online communication. Participants explored the platform's key features, including AI-generated social media posts, content scheduling, brand voice customization, and automated content suggestions. Participants realized that AI-powered tools can serve as valuable assistants in content creation, helping NGOs and youth organizations maintain an active online presence even when resources and staff time are limited. While AIs should never be left to automate, by having set photos and pre-made journals of projects made it advanced, tools like Marky AI can speed up processes quite a bit.

As for the last activity, Stevi gave a presentation on the key elements that make social media reels successful and appealing to viewers. Participants explored the importance of capturing attention within the first few seconds of a video through a strong "hook," whether that be a surprising fact, an intriguing question, a powerful visual, or a relatable statement. This was done by showing the actual editing files of the reels created during the training back in Romania, as well as storytelling techniques, video pacing, the effective use of captions, trending audio, visual consistency, and clear calls to action. As such participants were ready to spend the next day working on the content for their organizations, as well as coming up with the timeline on when to post them!

Day 3 – Saturday, June 19, 2026

Content creation day!

The ultimate content creation day! Armed with all the knowledge in the last 2 days, participants set on to create content based on training, as well as a calendar of when each post should be posted. As such

ACPELIA itself also took part in the activity focusing on the upcoming Youth Exchange "Heritage Treasures: Young Explorers of Europe" to take place in November 2026

SKE Pissouriou focused on content of the upcoming Youth Exchange "Make it Alive" taking place also in November 2026

Lykeio Apostolou Louka Kolossiou focused on "GLOBAL EDUCATION IN PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH", a school based 210 project focused on meetings with Portuguese and Polish

Polychoros Oroklinis focused on an upcoming KA154 project "Crafting the Future: Νέοι και Τοπική Αυτοδιοίκηση για την Κυπριακή Βιοτεχνία"

AYCEU focused on upcoming training course PLABONDS, taking place in 15- to 24 May 2027

Bright Steps focused on the upcoming Youth Exchange 404 Connection Found, taking place in late March in 2027.

Check out some of the notable posts created by the participants below, based on everything they learned in the previous two days!

Participants ultimately did the above by selecting internal roles, using realistic deadlines. This means that, depending on the skills are current roles of participants of each NGO, they focused on appearing in reels, scripting them, subtitling them, editing them or working on posts as well as copywriting the captions for those.

Of course, as we had the ability to have physical access to each other, participants also joined in working for each other's reels and posts as well, guiding them throughout the entire day.

Day 4 – Sunday, June 20, 2026

What comes next?

The day began with participants showcasing the content they created on Day 3 to the other participants, as well as presenting which specific upcoming project they focused on. Participants received feedback from the trainers, based on the content already created, and pledged to modify them before the action plan begins.

After showcasing the created content, this was when, in internal groups participants worked on setting up their own posting rules, commitments, and just as importantly, a realistic 30-day plan for their digital aspect of their organizations.

Participants used the knowledge gained on the previous 3 days to set not only dates of posting such content, but also the exact time, when this will take place. This editorial calendar is important, because once again each organization has a different kind of youth audience, as some are informal groups focusing on specific minorities (such as AYCEU) while others are directly involved with municipalities (such as Polychoros Oroklinis).

This was followed by participants creating a simple form of KPI Tracker, which stands for Key Performance Indicator, meaning a measurable value that shows how successful you are in a specific area. Almost all of the organizations present as partners in this specific local project, was to increase social media engagement, especially for newly registered informal groups AYCEU and Bright Steps. As such all organizations on average, created a KPI tracker that looks like this.

Participants noted down the current numbers of the last 10 days, meaning before they took part in this training, and will are set to track the results as the days go by. This was followed by conducting an ethics check, both on the content created during this training, but just as importantly, for posts that already exist on organizational pages based on the following facts.

And with that, for the last activity, participants filled in their youthpasses based on the competencies they gained, as well as conducted the evaluation of the local training course! That's it for now for team Cyprus! 🇨🇾

Next step, monitoring the 5 organizations as part of the local training course with their imputed implementation plan!

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