Transnational Youth Inititative idea was based on discussions and brainstorming with youth co-workign with Senfineco Association in Poland in city of Łódź. Youth expressed a need of having regular meetings, workshops and volunteering activities, which in parrarel will not be obliging them to work in one certain place for one precise group. Few members of the group are also former long-term volunteers within program EVS. After coming back from their experience they lost contact with their sending organisation and struggle with professional and social readapation to their previous environment. Project combines needs of two groups and take advantage of their backgrounds in order to promote volunteering as a developing activity for professional and personal life. Objectives through which we wish to achieve this aim are: • Empowering volunteers and ex-international volunteers. • Introducing values and benefits of volunteering for youth without such experience • Enabling recognition and development of already acquired competenes for ex-international volunteers • Creating a functional space for networing and self-development of youth based on non-formal, peer-to-peer learning for ex-volunteers and youth without such experience Activities we are proposing are tightly related to objectives. We wish youth to treat the created space as an incubator of ideas, creativity, moderated discussions and safe space for trying themselves in role of leader of workshops, organisers of events and researchers. We also wnat to provide a mentoring for former EVS volunteers, who will among peers with similar experience try to readapt to their community and recognize their capacity collected during the interantional experience. On a local base we will also develop and output - a map with descriptions of organisations in cities of Łódź and Ljubljana. Map will be a portfolio of activities for youth, which they can join according to their interest, time and preferences. Before the map development, youth will take interviews with selected organisations. Project includes two blended mobilities, which play a role of summary of particular phases, exchange of experiences and foregoing activities in both partner countries. During both mobilities youth from initiative groups will have a chance to lead workshops and share their outcomes from both phases of the ongoing projects. In between, coordinators of the project will meet twice on transnational meetings and put together outcomes of the project, plan and standardize strategy and discover similarities and differences between the groups, fields and ngoworld in international context.
We set a few goals: Transforming volunteering and EU programs as a path to personal and professional development. The state we wanted to achieve was to create a space for the exchange of experiences of people who already have experience of work / study / volunteering abroad with those who did not have the opportunity to try this type of activity. Thus, we wanted to compare the impact of these activities on the lives of young people and show how this experience can be used after returning to their community. In addition, we would like to show that returning to the country does not mean cutting off the values and lifestyle that volunteers led abroad, but is an extension of their new identity, a continuation of change, and not a "return to reality". To do this, we set ourselves smaller goals : - invite young people to take responsibility for recognizing their key competences and consciously acquiring new ones - promoting various youth programs for high school students who do not know what they could do immediately after graduating from high school. - creating a space for volunteering consultations, exchanging experiences, exchanging good practices and looking for voluntary activities in your local community.
By deciding to implement the project, we would like to improve the recognition of EU programs among young people with whom we work on a daily basis and to the group we belong to. Both organizations employ people under the age of 30 who, for several years of activity in the area of creating youth activities, have noticed recurring needs and patterns among their target groups: - a growing lack of knowledge and beliefs about life plans after graduating from high school - reduced sense of influence and agency among young people due to growing climate problems, unstable labor market needs, rapidly changing social values and standards that young people should adapt to - lack of knowledge about alternative learning opportunities and gaining experience outside work and conventional formal education - low level of entrepreneurship, innovation and "coping" competences - engaging in system volunteering, where it is difficult to create an individual style of work and diversify the acquired competences and experience