Project “People to people” aims at mutual exchange of experience and established practices / techniques in the development of volunteering with their subsequent introduction into practice. Participants are 3 partner volunteer centers – from Czech Republic / Bulgaria / Poland, where there are the key issues of transfer of good practice: volunteering seniors and labour of Voluntary Centre in the regional association / program BBBS for vulnerable children and medialisation / volunteering of youth and cooperation with schools and other organizations.Each of the partners will pass the topics to the others at 10 meetings over 3 years. It will be theoretical lectures and practical demonstrations, shadowing, etc., including printing guidelines. After this, the practical training will be arranged on the partner side and as well as verification practices in their organizations.Every 3 months around one week meeting of four teams will be held each in a different country and a final summary meeting will be held with the applicant in the Czech Republic. In total, therefore, there will be the participation of 40 people in a meeting, if we assume due to the continuity of the exchange of experiences rather repeated participation of smaller groups of representatives of each partner (min. 4 persons). The project outcomes will be 9 guidelines with recommendations (in practice) and their summaries (including information abot the progress of the project) in the final multilingual guide. This tool will further spread, especially in the context of local, regional and national cooperation of each partner.
The aim of the People to People project was to exchange experience in the development of volunteering with three foreign partners - the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria. The project was based on the need for international sharing and transfer of good practice to our regional conditions. The partners have been deliberately selected to engage in volunteering, but in different areas (eg mentoring programs, community volunteering, youth work). So the organization RADKA z.s. (Kadan, Czech Republic), which has been offering the services of a volunteer center since 2006, became a partner. The activities of the volunteer center are general and focus primarily on sending volunteers to publicly beneficial organizations in the region. Another partner was the BB-BS of the Bulgarian Association (Plovdiv, BG), which is the national association of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, in the Czech Republic known as the „Pět P“ Program. It is volunteering focused on mentoring relationships of volunteers and children at risk of social exclusion. The third partner was the organization Centrum ds.Katastrof i Klesk Zywiolowych TRATWA (Wroclaw, PL), which replaced the original Polish partner before the start of the project activities (consulted and approved by the NA). TRATWA has many of experience with young volunteers (national and foreign), which addresses in their natural environment through their community events. The project held 10 partnership meetings organized by individual partners in their countries with related topics. From every meeting there was created a record (description of good practice), that other project partners tried to implement in their activities. This implementation was evaluated after about 3 months in the form of written output. All meetings resulted in a clear list of all shared topics and evaluation of subsequent practice in other organizations. The result of the project is the introduction of new procedures in the management of volunteering, which individual partners are trying to spread in their regions (one of the points was also the networking of organizations). Some areas were not implemented, but this was also the aim of the project - to identify and map possible obstacles to further development, eg missing legislation, financing methods, etc. The target group, which gain the long-term benefits from the project, are not only the participants of the partnership meetings, but also the representatives of other organizations, volunteers, recipients of volunteer help, local community, etc. Professionalization of volunteering is still a "discovered" theme in our countries, and so some benefits will emerge in the longer-term horizon. However, it was also beneficial to build partnerships in other joint projects and activities, including networking with new organizations in each country.