Learn.Experience.And Share. is a strategic partnership between three organisations, which aim is improving capabilities of (youth) organisations in spreading and distributing their projects-activities even more widely and giving new professional experiences to participants. The main reason for this project were lack of skills in promoting and distributing organisations activities and projects. We have learned through our projects and by communicating with our partners, that generally project plans are greater than organisers could bring into life, due to insufficient knowledge. Professional promoting and distributing services are usually expensive for nonprofit organisations, which results in reduced size of desired target group. Our plan is to gather exchanged practices and professional skills together and introduce the learnt to other organisations. By doing that, we increase the activity of interested organisations and help them to reach even more to new audiences. During the 14-months of this project we will have 2 project meetings and 3 training courses. We will rely on a detailed plan as we are organising the project activities. Our goal and the project outcome will be an open-source tool-kit, available for all interested organisations. This tool-kit will serve as a platfrom, where we plan to expose all the learned or exchanged skills and experience (during training courses). As this will be an open-source and visible for everybody after the project as well, we are able to offer all the interested organisations to take part of what we learned and apply these methods to their everyday activities. In addition, we see a great opportunity for all the participating organisations and individuals to get new experiences and use it for their own projects. The aim of project meetings are generally activities, questions and problems related to the organising of training courses, developing tool-kit and preparing for distributing the results of the project. During the training courses we plan to exchange good practices from the projects/events organised by every partner, have lectures by the professional and experts and organise study-visits. Every participating organisation has to organise one project meeting and one training course. We have agreed that every organisation represents two motivated volunteers or members of the organisation in addition to the contact person. Only condition for the participants is that that they will be motivated and ready to contribute to the project during the 14-months. The number of participants from the organising partner could be higher in the activities, which will take place in their home country. We are cooperating with communication experts, photographers and designers who would be interested in sharing their experiences and good practices. In result we would like to raise level of visibility of nonprofit (youth)organisations through collected base of skills and knowledge and increase of their capability to run advertising activities by themselves). Through participating partner organisations and their cooperation partners we would like to introduce results of project and resources and possibilities of tool-kit to other organisations as well. That gives us opportunity to share collected experiences and new knowledge to other similar organisatons and raise level of impact of our project. We are ensuring that collected resources in tool-kit will remain available also after end of project.
Learn. Experience. And Share. was a strategic cooperation project between partner organizations of Estonia, Czech Republic and Croatia, its purpose was to develop nonprofit (youth) organizations’s capability to be more visible to its target audience through offering the project’s participants to gain new experiences and skills. Three organizations were involved in the project: Estonia*s own NPO Vaba Noor offering youth opportunities for self-expression, Croatia’s Ekonomska Klinika as a student organization improving (youth) knowledge of entrepreneurship and economy, and Czech Republic’s BeInternational improving youth social activity and mediating international training and participation opportunities. The project LEAS was brought to life due to participant’s own experience and knowledge of other organization’s activities and projects, of how ideas and plans are big but what are lacking are the skills of bringing the initiative(s) to their target audience. In general, professional advertising and marketing services are expensive and due to a lack of knowledge the amount of followers remains smaller than what was planned. We set a goal with our partners to bring the knowledge gained during the project and adapted to the field to other organizations, allowing participants to reflect on their experience and share that also to third parties interested in the initiatives or their results. During the 14-month-long project 2 transnational project meetings were held (in Tartu, Estonia and in Zagreb, Croatia) and 2 training activities organized (in Brno, Czech Republic and Tallinn, Estonia) in which the team members handling the partner organizations’ daily marketing and communications participated. As a result of the training program targeted for them and being the project’s final outcome, a web environment leashare.eu was created through which the project’s participants shared their gained knowledge with other enthusiasts. In addition to the creation of this so-called tool-kit, the project’s participants and their organizations gained experiences to apply in planning and carrying out future initiatives with the goal to reach their desired target audience better. The topics of the training program were formed based on partners’ self-analysis and mapping out participants’ needs of development. Three topics were discussed throughout all the activities: branding (the organization’s story, it’s visibility, planning and carrying out activities based on the aforementioned), effective use of social media (incl. content marketing, planning and carrying out campaigns) and strategic leadership in a (youth) organization / NPO (how to make mutual decisions leading to desired results and set goals). Additionally, in every meeting more specific subtopics were discussed, opened by invited experts of the same field, practitioners and representatives from other organizations with a similar profile. In order to allow all the partners to introduce others their organization’s structure and daily work, every partner got to plan, prepare and carry out at least one of the project’s activities. During the training activities and project meetings participants got acquainted with local (youth) organization’s activities, good practices and examples. The project’s participating organizations and their members assessed the gained experience valuable at the end of the project, and necessary in the aspect of analyzing their organization’s image. The opportunity to get feedback and tips for improving one’s image, and ideas for new information sharing opportunities, encouraged participants to experiment and elaborate on current approaches. In conjunction, as a result of the project a tool-kit reflecting the participants’ experiences and gained knowledge was created, offering practical tips and application options also for other similar organizations after the project ended. The project’s influence undoubtedly manifests itself for a longer period because instead of ready-made solutions work techniques and methods were shared, which performance depends on experimentation and feedback from the target audience (be it a change in enthusiasts, comments on transparency and attractiveness, feedback from partners or organization-wide satisfaction over their accomplishments).