‘European engagement’ understood as volunteering, activism, active participation and political participation with a direct European dimension is a shared characteristics of the partner organisations. Due to this shared characteristic, that creates entry-barriers in terms of skills, knowledge and attitude to these organisations, and do to additional ones (fully volunteer based organisations, and fully youth-led and youth-oriented organisations), the partner organisations have come to the conclusion that their volunteers are not very diverse. This lack of diversity among their volunteers is the topic addressed by this good-practice exchange project. By engaging into good-practice exchange through a cycle of seminars and by developing new tools and resources they will disseminate to their wide networks, the partner organisations expect to slowly engage in a process of change that will make them more open and inclusive to diverse volunteers. These seminars will present a vertical dimension, engaging volunteers from the local, national and European levels of the partner organisations. And an horizontal dimension, as they will be co-constructed by the partners according to their specific angle of work and expertise: mobility and communication for ESN; active european citizenship and civic education for AEGEE; political work and political engagement for JEF, thus covering major dimension of what we define as ‘European engagement’. All the process will be supported by YES Forum, an expert in working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Concretely, the project will consist of the development and implementation of a cycle of three interlinked seminars, developed by and addressed at young youth workers (volunteers) of the partner organisations, following a logical progression. The seminars will aim at developing the relevant knowledge, attitudes and skills among participants in order to bring about change within their own organisations. In addition, the project will seek to develop tools (compendium of good practices, guidelines and a workshop methodology) that will be used by the partners and beyond. While the project will impact directly 60 young youth workers, it will be directly disseminated to around 3000 participants and will have an indirect impact on the work of about 30 000 volunteer youth workers of the partner organisations, working in more than 1000 local organisations in 40 countries. On the longer-term we expect that this project will allow, internally, stronger cooperation between the partner organisations with the development of more advanced projects on the same topic. We expect that this project will slowly transform our organisations in more diverse and inclusive platforms, offering more accessible opportunities for European Engagement, thus participating at the creation of a shared sense of European active citizenship, which we deem absolutely crucial in the current times.
Launched in November 2017, DIVE brought JEF Europe, ESN International and AEGEE Europe, three European youth networks, along with six of their local and national members. The project was based on the observation that their activities, all European by nature (support to student mobility, European integration, European active citizenship), are not allowing full participation of young people as volunteers due to several perceived or real barriers. The project aimed at identifying these barriers and collectively reflecting on how to take them down. The final goal was to make member orgnisations of JEF, ESN and AEGEE more diverse and ultimately to make European volunteering more accessible and inclusive. The organisations were supported in this journey by YES Forum, a platform of organisations working with and for young people with fewer opportunities. The organisations together worked on the topic of diversity in European volunteering. After four Transnational Partners Meetings (in Lyon, Dubrovnik, Cagliari, and Brussels) and three trainings (in Sofia, Athens, and Malmö), the project has now finished and the organisations have succeeded in achieving the planned aim and objectives. DIVE undoubtedly allowed to raise awareness about the topics of inclusion and diversity in the partner organisations, internally and among their members. We planted a seed: the topic was introduced in the networks. DIVE triggered the discussion within our associations. It truly was an eye-opener project, as people were not always aware that inclusion was a problem in our organisations. Moreover, we succeeded to create three tangible outputs: - The Organisational Assessment Tool (OAT): It represents the first step to take on your path towards inclusion. This tool aims mainly at raising awareness of the topic. Indeed it triggers reflection by asking a set of questions intended to identify potential shortcomings in terms of inclusiveness. - The Training Session Outlines (TSO’s): a series of outlines for youth workers to implement workshops related to social inclusion in their local sections. - The Guide of Best Practices: It is a waste of time to reinvent the wheel, and although there is room for improvement in our organizations, we already have some good practices. Therefore, the partners exchanged and collected good ideas and practices that are already running in our organisations. It gave them the opportunity to share their experiences and to learn from each other. Nevertheless, we realised that all the topics were not covered. Therefore, we brainstormed together to also create new best practices. They cover the different barriers that were identified and offer easy steps to implement practices aimed at diversifying our membership. The deliverables were developed thanks to the exchange of ideas and experiences among members of youth organisations with the help of experienced trainers and the knowledge of the YES Forum. The developed tools are available on our websites to everyone. They were designed to be user-friendly, allowing anyone interested in the topics of Diversity and Inclusion to know more about it and to have the tools to organise an activity on it. DIVE allowed the partner organisations to be more aware of the issues of inclusion and diversity, and although the process has already started, in the longer-term.