Recognition of the non-formal education in formal system has been a priority topic of European educational policies for many years now. The main reason is that the non-formal education is able to flexibly respond to the needs of learners and develop the competences (communication, cultural openness, decision-making, problem-solving, self/time management ect.) one needs to fulfill his/her roles in society and in the labour market. These are very rarely developed in the formal education context, that’s why the universities are nowadays looking for ways how to update their education systems to tackle more these competences of their students. The partner organisations of this project (INEX-SDA Czech republic, IBG Germany and YAP Italy) have been part of almost 100 years old international voluntary service (IVS) movement, which connects the non-formal learning of young people with traditional volunteering activities (so called workcamps). By participating or leading such projects, young people vastly develop the above mentioned competences, and therefore recognition of the programmes these NGOs develop would help the universities fulfill their curricula with activities developing the competences students need. Moreover, by this project, the NGOs will have the opportunity to precise and increase quality of the educational programme they are offering for leaders of voluntary project. We propose the participants of this project (young people - future youth workers, currently students at the partner universities) will go through educational programme, that consists of training for leaders of voluntary project, leading a project, international multiplicators’ training and mutliplication activities. This programme is based on non-formal education and is focused on essential competences of these participants as well as on proper multiplication of their experiences among young people they work with and their peers. We will pilot these activities twice to involve 72-90 young people directly and to properly elaborate all the activities in details in pedagogical terminology. When we describe them properly and introduce in details the learning outcomes these participants reach during this educational programme, it will be much easier to talk the same “language” with the universities and start working on systemic recognition of the non-formal education volunteering programme in their curriculas. Aim of the project is therefore to bridge formal and non-formal learning to support high-quality education in general and in youth work specifically by training multiplicators. By mutliplying their experience, they will strengthen important values such as protection of human rights, respect, tolerance, social inclusion, critical thinking etc in the young people they will work with in various settings. By this, they will help building an educated, conscious new generation - and that’s the vision the whole IVS movement strives to. The objectives and target groups of the project are as follows: - to make young people and university teachers understand and experience the non-formal education approach - its nature, advantages and impact - to develop the competences of young people, complementary to those acquired during the formal education (decision making, problem-solving, intercultural learning, inclusive leadership...) and to introduce them to the topics of voluntary work, active citizenship, critical thinking etc to complete their profiles as qualified educated people and to let them to apply all the experiences in their work with young people - to motivate the young people attending this project to become active multipliers among their peers and teachers at universities, and among the young people they work with - to build trust and long-term cooperation between NGOs and Universities leading towards future recognition of the non-formal education programme based on volunteering in formal curricula - to build capacities of NGOs directly and indirectly involved (via international networks) in proficient methodical and pedagogical description of their non-formal education programmes. As results of this project, we will create an impact study on the educational programme and good practice handbook, that will be used mainly by universities and NGOs all over Europe.
Recognition of non-formal education in the formal system is one of the priority topics of European educational policies. The main reason is that non-formal education can flexibly respond to the needs of learners and develop the competences one needs to fulfill his/her roles in society and the labour market. Some of these are rarely developed in the formal education context (e.g., communication, cultural openness, decision-making, problem-solving, critical thinking), that’s why the universities are looking for ways to update their education systems to tackle more these competences of their students The partner organisations of this project (INEX-SDA Czechia, IBG Germany, YAP Italy) have been part of the already 100 years old International Voluntary Service (IVS) movement, which connects the non-formal learning of young people with traditional volunteering activities (workcamps). By participating or leading such projects, young people vastly develop the above-mentioned competences, and therefore recognition of the programmes these NGOs develop helps the universities fulfill their curricula. Moreover, by this project, the NGOs had the opportunity to precise and increase the quality of the educational programme they are offering. The participants of this project (young people - future youth workers, currently students at the partner universities) went through an educational programme, consisting of: A) Training for leaders of voluntary projects B) Preparation phase, C) Leading the 2-3 week long activity, D) International multiplicators’ training E) follow-up multiplication activities. This cycle was based on non-formal education and was focused on the essential competences of these participants as well as on proper multiplication of their experiences among young people they work with and their peers. We piloted this cycle of activities twice (in 2019 in the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy with a final international reflection and multiplication activity in the Czech Republic; and in 2021 in the Czech Republic, Germany and France with a final international reflection and multiplication in Germany. All together, we involved around 70 young people directly. Thanks to the implementation of these activities, we properly elaborated on our activities in detail in pedagogical terminology. We described them properly and monitored the learning outcomes young people gained out of their participation. Having the research findings, it made it easier to start to speak the same “language” with the universities. As a result, we started working on systemic recognition of the non-formal education volunteering programme inside official curricula with more than 10 universities in the mentioned countries, while aiming to reach even more universities in the future by continuous work with the project results. Aim of the project was therefore to bridge formal and non-formal learning to support high-quality education in general and in youth work specifically by training multiplicators who will share about their experience and connect even more NGOs and universities. Our vision is to build many of such cooperation with an aim to help building an educated and conscious new generation. The objectives and target groups of the project were as follows: - to make young people and university teachers understand and experience the non-formal education approach - its nature, advantages and impact - to develop the competences of young people, complementary to those acquired during the formal education and to introduce them to the topics of voluntary work, active citizenship, critical thinking etc., to complete their profiles as qualified educated people and to let them to apply all the experiences in their work with young people - to motivate the young people attending this project to become active multipliers among their peers and teachers at universities, and among the young people they work with - to build trust and long-term cooperation between NGOs and Universities leading towards future recognition of the non-formal education programme based on volunteering in formal curricula - to build capacities of NGOs directly and indirectly involved (via international networks) in proficient methodical and pedagogical description of their non-formal education programmes. As a result of this project, we created an impact study on the educational programme – a research report on what competencies young people develop together with its methodological description (IO1 - the impact study), a short documentary movie explaining the whole educational process (IO1 - documentary movie) and a good practice handbook, which will be used mainly by universities and NGOs all over Europe so they can get inspired from our best practises and results (IO2 - good practice booklet) accompanied by session plans to the weekend training for project leaders (IO2 - weekend training methodology).