Context NSU has together with its member organisations and partners (26 organisations involved) in 2019 carried out a questionnaire and two seminars to define what challenges we as Northern European youth NGO are facing. One of the central issues was board work. The origin of the problem is in most cases that too much work is on too few persons, which leads that there is not enough human resources to develop the processes, search for new tools, build and recognise skills, take care of the board members wellbeing and motivate new persons to join the board. These are the challenges we aim to address in Board Boost. Aim The aim of Board Boost is to increase European youth NGOs´ capacity to develop their board work. Objectives The objectives are to: 1. to analyse the core needs of board work and collect best practices examples, 2. develop a digital course that support development of board work, as well as wellbeing and personal growth for board members, and 3. disseminate the digital course both among current central persons in European youth work, and among potential new board members. Target group The target group is current and potential board members in northern European youth NGOs, as well as the organisations´ other central persons who work closely with the boards. We expect approximately 150 persons to be directly involved in the project. Beneficiaries The project strengthens youth NGO by supporting their board work. Thereby the end beneficiaries are young people in the NGOs and the societies where the organisations are active. Partnership The Board Boost partners are 5 youth organisations from Denmark, Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden, and additionally we cooperate with associated partners in the same countries and other Nordic and Baltic countries. Structure Board Boost runs for 15 months (mid June 2020 – mid September 2021) and include - Production of the Intellectual Output, a digital course, which is done locally by the partners and coordinated online June 2020 - March 2021. - 2 Multiplying Events held in April 2021 in Finland and July 2021 in Denmark. - Facilitated test round of the digital course held in May-June 2021 online - 3 Transnational Project Meetings for project coordination and progress follow-up, held in in June 2020 in Sweden, in December 2020 in Latvia and in September 2021 in Germany. Result The digital course is the projects’ main outcome, and it will consist of material (video/text input, assignments) supporting youth NGOs to develop their board work. The course will consist of: - Overview of current board work situation - Templates that support the structure of board work - Competence development support - Introduction to skills recognition tools - Tools for taking care of board members mental health - Ideas for how to recruit new board members The digital course material will be available online for individual use at any time, and we will run it in facilitated version during the project and afterwards. This means that a group of participants study the digital course simultaneously during a 2-month period and discuss/reflect on the material at 3 facilitated online meetings. Impact The expected impact is that the five partners, the close network of 26 organisations and many more youth NGOs around Europe increase capacity to develop their board work. Better board work strengthens the organisations, offers more to the young people and enhance the organisations´ interaction in the society. Dissemination We will disseminate Board Boost for wider use of the digital course in the partnership, at associated partners and at Nordic and European umbrella organisations. Follow-up After Board Boost we will during a 2-years period follow up the development of Board Work at the participating and associated NGOs. During this time we will continue running facilitated rounds of the digital course and possibly hold follow-up projects supporting development of youth NGOs in some other way.
Before getting to the objectives, we would like to recall that the aim of Board Boost was to increase European youth NGOs´ capacity to develop their board work. The objectives were to: 1. to analyse the core needs of board work and collect best practices examples, 2. develop a digital course that support development of board work, as well as wellbeing and personal growth for board members, and 3. disseminate the digital course both among current central persons in European youth work, and among potential new board members.
NSU has together with its member organisations and partners (26 organisations involved) in 2019 carried out a questionnaire and two seminars to define what challenges we as Northern European youth NGO are facing. One of the central issues was board work. The origin of the problem is in most cases that too much work is on too few persons, which leads that there are not enough human resources to develop the processes, search for new tools, build and recognise skills, take care of the board members wellbeing and motivate new persons to join the board. These are the challenges we aim to address in Board Boost.