Lower income regions such as the crisis struck and underdeveloped East, South East and Mediterranean (ESEM) EU Countries are in desperate need of innovative ideas to support regional growth, to preserve living standards and to adhere to global trends. However, it is quite often that such regions fail to meet such demands and provide its citizens with adequate tools and mechanisms to support this appraisal (Abazi and Aliu, 2015). Having recognized this context, non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and, more recently, social enterprises, have, been among the top new job providers in the EU. However, these positive developments have mainly affected West European countries such as UK. In ESEM Europe it has been rather difficult to mobilize people for social ends and attract especially the young generation in voluntary organizations (Sotiropoulos 2005). Thus, in order to address this matter, NGOs play a central role - by being the key institutions having the capacity to engage more people into this working sector. Nevertheless, there is a highly confirmed multi-lateral skill gap of NGO (adult) workers in ESEM countries from the basic project management and budget raising strategies to the ones most critical for NGOs - necessary skills of their staff to actively engage with stakeholders and actively promote NGOs as the new emblematic image of ESEM countries by encouraging more people to join this sector and help to achieve a EU-wide homogeneous active citizenship and social cohesion, while mitigating groups at risk (Clarke et al 2015; Frangonikolopoulos 2015). However, such skills can be acquired only through co-creation (in an open innovation manner) between adult NGO workers and the involved stakeholders: society (primary resource), research/innovation (for best practice transfer), policy makers (favouring policies), industry (philantropy and social inclusion in growth mechanisms) as well as any other associations - all these stakeholders being acknowledged as the quadruple helix system (Carayannis & Campbell, 2012; Chesbrough, 2013). Considering the similarity of this problematic context in ESEM countries, this project (ATSIV) will develop a multisectoral network of partners from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland (the four ESEM countries) and UK (Western countries) in order to develop the required skills of adult NGO workers from ESEM countries by infusing best practices from already successful Western societies (i.e. UK) where these skills are flourishing. ATSIV adheres to OECD's vision that "adult skills and in particular civic engagement skills by capitalizing on NGOs form an integral part of adult education - next to literacy and numeracy" and thus adult education in this field is core to ATSIV. This transnational aim will be achieved through the following objectives:1) Perform a training needs analysis (TNA) of the existing skill gaps in the involved countries as well as collect a base of best practices in terms of NGO related skills (globally, from developed countries). 2) Together with quadruple helix stakeholders, co-create an NGO game-based curriculum to fill the skill gap of adult NGO workers. The innovative curriculum will be game based in order to provide constructive social learning and progress based-cohesion as well as social group discrepancy mitigation. 3) Develop an open access (globally) virtual learning environment (VLE) in order to enable co-creation in an open-innovation manner. The VLE will contain the NGO game based curriculum as well as best practices that will shape the skills of adult NGO workers. The VLE will enable forum-based co-creation for quadruple helix stakeholders (open access) in order for the stakeholders to constantly co-create and moderate the curriculum & best practices/scenarios posted online (by the learners involved in the game) in order to ensure that the NGO game based curriculum & best practices are highly suitable for the needs of each stakeholder involved in this process. This approach will also enable mass impact and mobilization at no cost for disadvantaged adult NGO workers ensuring a homogeneous impact in EU. 4) Organize three transnational face-to-face pilots with the involved ATSIV partners and quadruple helix stakeholders in order to capitalize the co-creation and ensure an optimum VLE and game based curriculum. ATSIV will impact in terms of: more skilled and socially aware adult NGO workers; enhanced quadruple helix co-creation and local/regional/nationa/EU level, increase of active citizenship, mitigation of the social groups at risk, boost of NGO job market, increased philantropy from quadruple helix stakeholders towards NGOs, cross-EU homogenous NGO innovation through co-creation, achievement of EU2020, EU Digital Agenda, EU Social Cohesion & active citizenship agenda, EU HE Modernisation/Internationalization Agenda, Digitalization of industries, EU directive on social entrepreneurship, etc
Nowadays NGOs workers as well as people with which they cooperate, either employees, members or volunteers, encounter a wide range of difficulties related to the lack of basic knowledge in recent and highly relevant digital spheres. ATSIV - a project with the main purpose to increase the professional competences of NGOs workers, has resulted in the development of a Training Game that provides an open access online platform of training. The ATSIV Game is an innovative and rather interesting tool to enhance NGOs workers skills. It ensures professional development needed for the nonprofit sector by play and personal study. The content of Game reveals explicit issues of the NGOs workers professional activity, which is comprehensively outlined in the three topics such as: Digital Marketing, Crowd-funding and Networking. The ATSIV Game was made in a manner that keeps the attention of the player, so it is not difficult to concentrate on materials that Game is aimed to convey. ATSIV provides also a virtual learning environment which includes a course on Digital Marketing. It allows the participants to learn and acquire skills in Communication, Social Media and Online Advertising, all tailored to the needs of NGO workers. The course provides a robust set of learner-centric functionalities in a user-friendly way with an uncomplicated interface and easy functionality. As an virtual learning environment, ATSIV is accessible anytime, anywhere. It is also compatible with any browser and any access device, ensuring that all its page elements and functionalities are complete and arranged as the original page design. In general, during the project, the following main activities have been undertaken: IO1 – Training needs analysis of adult NGO workers’ skills (skills matrix) and benchmarking of best practices in adult learning/teaching were collected and recorded. IO2 - Co-creation of a game based curriculum for adult NGO workers IO3 - Development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) to enable continuous quadruple helix co-creation of the game based curriculum and best practices (also ensuring multi-stakeholder validation of the resources) 5 Multiplier events 3 short term joint staff training/mobility events (TCGP) for game-based curriculum co-creation tool place Focus groups in 4 countries were conducted with different stakeholders, foundations and public officials but also journalists and representatives of private companies (via their CSR departments), providing their comments and feedback on the ATSIV game and VLE. 4 Transnational project meetings (Greece, Romania, Thessaloniki, Greece) took place during the project’s lifetime. Overall, the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) created has drawn significant attention to the respective communities with more than 935 single users. Within the VLE a great variety of additional resources have been included both educating and informing visitors on issues related to the NPO ecosystem, managing an NPO, etc as well as the more specific issues covered by the project: digital marketing, crowd-funding and networking. the online game, has already impacted the community of Non-profits across the four participating countries, with more results already tangible in Greece and Poland in which there are partners that act as hubs for NPOs. More than 1,562 people, representatives of NPOs, have utilized the game further disseminating the results of the project. In addition, the project has contributed to build up the collaboration between the partners and other stakeholders (policy makers, various (private) associations and universities) by bringing them together to the focus groups. Additionally, stakeholders participating in the focus groups were engaged in the project through significantly contributing to the creation of the training needs analysis, on which the curriculum and the gaming platform were based upon. During all three Transnational Co-Creation & Game Pilot (TCGP) organized in Greece, Bulgaria and Poland, participants representing a wide variety of roles within the wider NGO ecosystem consisted of Program Managers, Research Associates, Project Officers, Assistants Managers, Head of IT Departments, Senior lecturers and Legal Experts, through questionnaires and focus groups, evaluated the impact of the pilot game in general and more specifically the user experience of the game and the educational material included in the pilot game. In terms of impact within partners there was an overall enhancement of knowledge and cooperation initiatives between them. Since the initiation of the project there has been more collaboration, mainly in terms of common proposals in EU projects, among various partners. Furthermore, cooperation initiatives in terms of academic research has been recorded with two academic articles being co-authored by different partners (SNSPA and UoP, UoP with SNSPA and Umbrella) while some additional ones being currently under discussion.