In this project, coordinated by Kosmo Strategio Ltd., a SME born from the NGO-sector, five organisations from United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, France and Denmark have actively cooperated on giving a significant contribution on the raising of the quality of adult education and training. The main objectives of the project are: to facilitate the exchange of good practice among organisations from different backgrounds; to empower the skills of volunteers and voluntary trainers thanks to training, international experience and peer-to-peer learning; to facilitate the knowledge transfer within each organisation, thus creating more sustainable organisations; to engage more adult people in facing the challenges relevant for adult education; to provide proper training materials reusable by other voluntary trainers and other actors in the field of adult education; to raise the quality of adult education activities thanks to better skilled trainers; to create opportunities for partnerships among organisations focused on adult education. The activities are focused on exchange of better practice on training (models, tools, methodological approaches, successful experience, lessons learned), peer-to-peer training of voluntary trainers, collection of better practice, guidance, training tools and materials, openly accessible and reusable by others. One of the main concerns of the consortium is to put together the gained experience and better practice on empowerment of active volunteers and voluntary trainers, useful to overcome the skill-mismatch which often affects the volunteers involved in NGOs, and to ensure a smoother transfer of knowledge within the organisation. A constant orientation, maintained through a systematic requalification strategy, can help to face the main challenges linked to the high turnover and instability rate which sometimes characterises organisations based on voluntary work. For this reason, some initiatives and project on the topics of skill empowerment for voluntary trainers have been implemented, but the consortium has agreed that the process of qualification and professionalisation of voluntary trainers needs to be pushed forward with further initiatives, in order to maximise its results. On the basis of a need-analysis carried out by our partnership, this project aims at facilitating the exchange of better practice and experience in a European dimension, at collecting and disseminating training practice, guidance, methods tools and reusable resources and, as an overall result, at raising the quality of NGO-activities and of voluntary work. The main project activities include five transnational project meetings (April 2020, Toulouse, France; June 2020, Copenhagen, Denmark; December 2020, Białystok, Poland; February 2021, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK; March/April 2021, Bologna, Italy), aimed at coordinating the project activities, at exchanging better practice on training (models, tools, methodological approaches, successful experience, lessons learned) and at collecting and creating proper training materials about the main topic of the project. The participants in this project are volunteers within the NGO worldwide network the partner organisations are part of; this is expected to ensure a wider dissemination scope and a high impact of the project results, giving an added value to this partnership. After each project meeting the partners ran activities at national and local level. Training tools, guidance and better practice were presented, discussed and adapted to the activities of each partner and disseminated within local and national networks, and the resources coming from the outcomes of the project were available online even beyond the end of the project's lifespan. Regarding other project results, it is expected to increase awareness and knowledge about the topics faced by the project in the participants, to improve their skills and methodological background, and to enhance their personal growth and development. The envisaged impact of the partnership project is quantifiable in terms of a higher number and an improved effectiveness of non-formal learning activities of NGOs beyond the borders of the partnership in the participating countries as well as in other countries, thanks to the multiplier effect of the project. In the long-term this will contribute to raise the quality of the activities carried out in the framework of volunteer-based NGOs - through an effective dissemination strategy -, expected to be able to engage volunteers in an active European citizenship dimension thanks to high-quality volunteering, able to make a concrete change in the society.
This two-year partnership (extended till 29 months because of the oubreak of the Covid-19 pandemic) project aimed at: facilitating the exchange of good practice among organisations from different backgrounds; empowering the skills of volunteers and voluntary trainers thanks to training, international experience and peer-to-peer learning; facilitating the knowledge transfer within each organisation, thus creating more sustainable organisations; engaging more adult people in facing the challenges relevant for adult education; providing proper training materials reusable by other voluntary trainers and other actors in the field of adult education; raising the quality of adult education activities thanks to better skilled trainers; creating opportunities for partnerships among organisations focused on adult education.
This project, initiated by Kosmo Strategio ltd. (United Kingdom), Bunta Esperanto-Asocio (Italy), Danish Esperanto Association (Denmark), Bialystok Esperanto Society (Poland), Centre Culturel Espéranto Toulouse (France) was focused on the main topic of training of trainers. This project has been conceived to put together better practice and experience on skill empowerment of active volunteers and voluntary trainers, in order to contribute to overcome the so called "skill-mismatch" (frequent issue affecting volunteers involved in NGOs), to ensure a smoother transfer of knowledge, and to support a process of professionalisation of voluntary trainers thanks to common resources reusable by other organisations and individuals, in order also to raise the quality of voluntary training work.