For 19 months, 4 organizations from Romania, France, Greece and Spain will cooperate with the main GOAL to increase the quality of European volunteer activities (ESC) and to improve the learning process, by developing a mentoring focused on the needs of young beneficiaries and strategically correlated with the socio-cultural realities of the communities involved. Along with these organizations, 16 other organizations involved / interested in ESC will be assimilated to build a consortium of 20 organizations to improve and multiply the tangible results the project proposes. The four partner organizations have experienced the implementation of EVS projects, then through a KA1 / E + called ME + NTOR their teams had the chance to compare their realities in this type of activity and despite the differences due to social, cultural and economic realities, a common problem was raised: the need to invest more in the development of mentoring quality as a a minimum requirement for optimal quantification of the experiences of young people dedicated to the causes of solidarity in an intercultural context. EVS and ESC share the dual challenge that young volunteers must face: the need to adapt within intercultural contexts and to understand in a timely manner how to offer their energy and creativity to help solve the needs of target groups in difficulty. They ask the teams of the responsible organizations to be aware of the importance of achieving not only a broad formative process and a strategy of gradual planning of activities, but necessarily a personalized support that will provide, besides a state of emotional comfort, the reflexive process, as an individual lab for awareness of the accumulation of new knowledge, abilities and competencies. The objectives of this project aimed at raising awareness of the quality of mentoring will foster, through innovative and integrated approaches, the building of diversity-based actions that promote the assumption of community values, with a special focus on young people at risk of marginalization. The MAIN GROUP will consist of 32 youth workers, volunteer coordinators, ESC project managers, mentors, 12 from partner organizations, 20 from the consortium, and the youth work networks from their areas. OBJECTIVES: - Developing the potential of partner organizations, consortium and their collaborative networks to develop ESC community impact projects, based on the processing of voluntary experiences through an effective and valuable mentoring approach -Creating the quality of the mentoring process in ESC organizations by developing reference tools for both mentoring training and for monitoring and evaluating the learning process of European volunteers - Improving the importance of quality mentoring in the environment of ESC implementing organizations in partner countries, with well-defined benchmarks and standards, aiming at maintaining an effective balance between volunteer engagement and emotional support and monitoring of experiential learning. THE RESULTS OF THE PROJECT will be - A COURSE DESIGN FOR MENTOR TRAINING, A METHODOLOGY - A set of mentoring, monitoring and evaluation tools for ESC. Results at the level of partner organizations and consortium will be: 1. By increasing the professionalism of the youth workers teams, it is desired to increase the interest of the members of the host community and to assume the importance of mentoring by them in order to support the mission of ESC 2. increase the capacity of the ME + ESC consortium organizations to implement quality ESC projects for the development of volunteers and for a greater impact in the community 3. increasing the capacity of partner organizations to promote the importance of ESC mentoring strategic management and to provide advice to interested ESC organizations. ACTIVITIES through which these results will be obtained will be a series of online cooperation actions of different categories of participants, supported by management meetings such as project management quality, hosted by organizations from Greece, Spain and finally France, as well as of two learning activities: - a seminar for the conceptual systematization of the cooperation, the development of the intercultural team that will be involved in the development of the transferable results, with the participation of the youth workers from the partner organizations - A training course aimed at configuring the quality of tangible results, forming the team of youth workers from the consortium, developing strategies for transferring these results to other groups of specialists and organizations interested in mentoring quality in the ESC.
OBJECTIVES -we have developed the potential of the partner organisations in the consortium and their networks of collaborators to develop impactful ESC projects in community, based on a processing of volunteering experiences through an efficient and valuable mentoring approach. - we have increased the quality of the mentoring process in ESC organisations by developing benchmark tools for both mentor training and monitoring and evaluating the learning process of European volunteers - we have enhanced the importance of quality mentoring in the environment of ESC implementing organisations in partner countries, with good benchmarks and standards defined standards, aiming to maintain an effective balance between volunteer engagement and the emotional support and monitoring process of experiential learning. THE MAIN PROJECT"S GOAL was to increase the quality of intercultural volunteering activities and improve the learning process by developing a mentoring centred on the needs of the young beneficiaries and strategically linked to the socio-cultural realities of the communities involved.
Buiding the application of this project, the partners organizations needs’ analyse regarding international volunteering support has discovered that we have common aspects to work in together. So, here are these common needs: 1.Mentor retention and training being a complex and unpredictable activity can destabilize the smoothness of sustaining the mentoring process in a organization implementing activities with volunteers for social causes and automatically the coordination process becomes cumbersome and less relevant from the from the perspective of experiential learning 2. ESC project coordinators, a role often carried out by youth workers, need tools to help them form a local network of potential mentors: a course support, monitoring and evaluation tools for the mentoring process 3 ME+NTOR_ESC partner organisations need standardised tools and procedures, to use previous and new experiences and ESC opportunities of the youth workers forming their teams in order to strengthen their position as a resource centre for partners in resource centre for community/regional partners involved or interested in ESC projects.