The partnership brought together Youth Volunteering Organizations from 12 Countries (Italy, Belgium, Spain, Finland, France, Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine, Russian Federation, Serbia, Korea and Mexico) 2 Research Institutes and 2 Volunteering Networks (the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organizations and the Italian Volunteering Centres Network). The YNGOs are active in the promotion of International Voluntary Service programmes, and involve in volunteering and exchange projects around 5000 youngsters every year. These programmes include workcamps of 2-3 weeks and medium and long term projects of 2-12 months and impacts on hosting local communities and on volunteers who experience informal learning in intercultural and collective contexts. The network of the concerned organizations has 85 members and partners, able to involve around 18.000 young volunteers in Europe and worldwide. The active local communities in Europe, mainly isolated or disadvantaged, are around 1750.The YNGOs and their volunteers needs to improve the capacity of recognition of these experiences, so to answer to different expectations and purposes. Youth organizations aim at bridging the educational effect of volunteering with formal educations systems and work sector, and to enhance the accountability of this specific informal learning setting. Volunteers are still not able to show what they have learned in terms of soft skills and meta-competencies and cannot fully exploit the voluntary service experience to improve their educational paths and employability.

Solidarités Jeunesses would like to propose a project on how voluntary projects impact the perception and representations one's have and thus on stereotypes that arise from it.Volunteering projects offer the opportunity to discover new cultures and habits through local organisations, consequently by living the daily life of the people, participating to a project serving the local communities and meeting different organisations answering local needs (environment, construction, social, etc).At the same time, volunteering offers learning opportunities while contributing to meaningful actions during the protection of cultural diversity and the improvement of living conditions.However to experience those projects led on the field by us, voluntary organisations, in many countries in the world, and to allow a change in the volunteers' perceptions of those countries, there is a need for an upstream work in terms of communication in order to increase the number of volunteers going to participate to voluntary project and consequently, supporting the implementation of projects. A great number of the young people are attracted by IVS and eager to contribute to this kind of actions. Despite this, the IVS movement are recording a dramatic decrease in the number of volunteers exchanged especially towards African countries.→ What are the causes of this phenomenon?→ Does the multiplications of other types of volunteering affect us?The will with this project is to identify key elements of our projects in order to communicate better on them for a higher recognition.For this project, we've decided to focus on the projects implemented by our partner organisations in Africa.Indeed too many times, we've noticed that the first words that come to the mind of people when thinking of Africa are: hunger, wars, poverty and refugees. The volunteers still come up with the idea that Africa needs “help”. Through the use of several methods and tools, this project aims at changing this perception and to support our partner organisations in the implementation of their projects.The objectives of the project is to:-To improve the perception of Africa and to develop a critical thinking dealing with mass media, in order to better communicate on IVS projects-To deconstruct stereotypesThose two objectives will lead us to our main one which is:-To increase the number of volunteers exchanged

<< Objectives >>Egyesek is a well-established organisation in the field of International Voluntary Service (IVS). It is also member of the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations, a network gathering 53 organisations whose main activity is organising international workcamps in their national realities. Workcamps last 2 weeks and gather a group of young volunteers from different nationalities. During the project volunteers live and work together, doing activities for the benefit of the local community hosting the activity.Workcamps are volunteering projects whose value is deeply recognized by the EU Commission: it is not by chance that the new ESC programme entails a specific form of volunteering, meaning the “VOLUNTEERING TEAMS” (workcamps).Each workcamp is coordinated by at least 2 campleaders, meaning experienced volunteers in charge of the group management, of participants’ wellbeing and of the achievement of the tasks foreseen by the workcamp itself.Workcamp leaders are supposed to receive a specific preparation to be able to cover their role; however, several small organisations belonging to the IVS movement cannot properly prepare their youth leaders, because of lack of human and material resources.The discrepancy in preparation of camp leaders can put in danger the quality and the success of the projects of several organisations, and indirectly Egyesek work itself and the cooperation among the whole project partnership.To tackle this common issue and increase the quality and impact of the projects, Egyesek and the partners involved in the project developed the idea of implementing an international Training for Trainers, consisting of an activity to be held in Hungary in May 2020. The project partners will send to the training their most active volunteers as trainees. The trainees will develop their training skills, knowledge about the IVS movement and its values, and will be enabled to train in turn the future youth leaders, responsible of the workcamps implemented by the project partners during the IVS season 2020-2021.Thanks to this process, the project intends to meet the needs shared by the whole partnership: improve the quality of projects and their impact through the development of a standard educational programme for campleaders, who will be the main deliverable of LEA.P.S. project. << Activities >>The LEA.P.S. project foresees the implementation of an activity hosted by Egyesek and to be implemented in Hungary from 7 to 11 May 2020. The activity will involve 12 partners (including Egyesek) from Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Spain, Serbia and Turkey who will send 21 participants (including 5 members of the training team). The Alliance, the network to whom the partners belong, will be also included in the partnership, to contribute with coordination, visibility and dissemination tasks. The activity will be shaped up as a training for trainers, aimed at providing skills and knowledge to the participants, who will in turn coordinate training for future compleaders trainers. The activity will be built on the principles of the NFE: learning by doing, experience sharing, self-assessment, human rights based approach.Digital learning will also be used in our project: participants will be prepared for the training through a webinar and several online courses, instrumental to introduce the topics addressed during the activitiy.Participants will be young volunteers, aged between 18 and 30 years. It is expected the age of 90% of the participants to be 18-30, and 10% to be older.Participants will be included in the project according to the following criteria:- have taken part in at least 2 workcamps, as youth leaders;- are available to attend the training and to get involved in their sending organisations to prepare the campleaders of the workcamp season 2020-2021.- recognize themselves in the IVS values;- are familiar with non-formal education tools and methods;- are interested in developing/improving their training skills;- are ready to meet people coming from other realities;If there are more applications than places, preference will be given to young people with fewer opportunities.<< Impact >>LEA.P.S. intends to achieve the following results:1. a standard educational programme for campleaders will be developed and shared, not only among the project partners but also with other IVS stakeholders;2. 16 training participants will be provided with a learning mobility opportunity that will give them the chance to increase their social and professional skills;3. the 16 trainees will prepare around 500 campleaders to coordinate high quality volunteering projects and to spread through their role the IVS and European values of youth engagement, intercultural dialogue, solidarity, peace, gender equality, inclusion and environmental sustainability;4. around 5000 young volunteers involved in the workcamps of the IVS season 2020 (+ other 5000 involved in the IVS season 2021) will take part in high quality projects, coordinated by well-prepared campleaders, and will live a lifetime experience that will have a strong impact on their selfdevelopment;5. by raising the quality of the projects implemented within the project partnership, the cooperation between the organisations involved in the projects will become more fruitful and solid. Following the results this project is expected to have, new projects will be developed among the partnership.It is expected that the project will generate a strong impact on the participants, the partner organisations and the network of the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations. Thanks to the project, participants will gain valuable skills, will start a reflection about their professional future and will become ambassadors and multipliers of IVS essential values.All partner organisations of the project will benefit of the activities. One of the most positive effect will be the possibility in the close future to count on well trained campleaders, who will be prepared by the participants after the training, and will ensure success to the voluntary projects that will be implemented in the local realities during the season in 2020 and 2021. It is expected that this process will improve activists, volunteers and organisations, which will be recognized in the countries of the partners as actor of local community and social development.All the project partnership, and the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations in general, will be strongly influenced by the project outcomes: the educational programme for camp leaders’ preparation will be shared not only with the project partners but with all Alliance members (and other IVS stakeholders too).Working within a frame of shared values and well-established quality procedures and practices will for sure strengthen our cooperation, within the project partnership and the Alliance.

"The project “Frame[v]work” aims at improving the quality of volunteers exchange within the IVS movement, in order to reinforce the concepts of international voluntarism, active participation and international solidarity. The name refer to the concepts of framework, network and voluntarism: “Frame[v]work"" intends to be a capacity-building project to develop a functional, shared framework for international voluntary work and volunteers exchange in the IVS movement. The partners of the projects are networks and organisations who implement long-term and short-term voluntary projects involving local activists, international volunteers and local communities. The members of the partenrship share the same needs:-the need to find solutions to stop the drop of volunteers in workcamps;-the need to harmonize the exchange procedures for short-term and long-term volunteers developed by the different networks of the IVS movement;-the need propose clear and unify promotional strategy for international voluntarism, in order to reinforce the involvement and active participation of young people, including those with fewer opportunities;-the demand to map all the existing best practices on volunteer exchange and to share them within the networks, in order to increase the quality standards of projects and the campacity on the assessment of their impact. IIn order to improve the quality of the international voluntary activities of the IVS movement, it is vital to involve as many networks as possible in the process. For this reason, the partnership include large networks (CCIVS, Alliance, NVDA, SCI) and several organisations coming from different regions and continents. The final outcome of the project will be the creation of new guidelines for voluntary exchange, more updated and comprehensive that the ones already existing.The project foresees 4 phases:- A preparation phase, with the creation of the Steering Team and the kick-off meeting, where representatives from the networks and organisations will analyse the current exchange procedures and prepare the ground for the following regional laboratories;- The 4 regional laboratories, where organisations will analyse all the aspects of their region related to volunteer exchange, quality standards of projects, promotion and communication;- An evaluation and production phase, where the outputs from each laboratory will be evaluated and consolidated into a final production (exchange guidelines with a contribution from all networks);- A dissemination phase, including a training course to share the new guidelines with IVS organisation and to illustrate the way they can be applied to voluntary projects, in order to improve their quality and impact."

STEP to Change is a project which aims at starting an empowerment process for International Voluntary Service (IVS) organisations, bringing competences on organisational management, impact measurement and improvement, and by allowing to make a first global diagnosis of the existing needs and capacities of IVS members and regions worldwide.The proposal follows the mission of the CCIVS which is, among other functions, to empower its members and IVS orgs so that they will have better capacity to reach their goals and achieve their vision as ngo's and as a movement. The General Assembly of the CCIVS 2014 in Korea approved a plan for the CCIVS to implement an Empowerment & Monitoring system which should allow to assess the needs of IVS ngo's, provide them with support, trainings and synergies, which may turn weaknesses into strengths and opportunities.This project aims at being the start for the implementation of such a system within the CCIVS. It will also allow to complete a global Impact research on IVS.The general process, priorities and baselines will be arranged by a Steering Team (ST), which will be formed by representatives of 4 IVS networks and a team of 4 experts, in the seminar Setting the Path (France, March'17). There, experts will finetune and develop the tools, and implement a peer-training, to ensure a highlevel of quality for the next phases.The central events of this project will be the regional STEPs (Strategic Trainings for Empowerment Processes), which will happen one in each region(Africa, America, Asia, Europe), led by the team of experts. Each of these STEPs will consist on a first international training on organisational management and impact measurement, for partners in the region,which will allow also to complete a needs-assessment of the participating ngo's. The training will be followed by a field itinerary, which will lead experts to visit each of the countries of the participating ngo's, to lead training, impact measurement of IVS projects and field visits.Outcomes of the STEPs will be global/regional needs-assessment and impact measurement of ngo's in 20 countries, worldwide, and trained professionals.All these materials will be processed by the team of experts, with the help of the ST, to create a first global diagnosis of needs in the movement, and a global report of the impact of IVS.The final seminar Build the Common Path (Hungary, May'18), will have two main goals: first, to process, discuss and valorise the results of the global research-training; second, to build common strategies to set up the long term Monitoring and Empowerment programme of the CCIVS, including fundraising and sustainability strategies adapted to each region and donor.STEP to Change will leave empowered multipliers in 4 continents, trained professionals, a global report on Impact of IVS and a first global diagnosis of the IVS movement, basis for a common strategy for a long-term Empowerment & Monitoring programme for the movement.