INNOVOL aims at enhancing the management and the participated governance, as well as innovation capacity and internationalisation of NPOs working with and for Youth, targeting young volunteers (aged 18-30) and youth workers/trainers usually engaged in their training. In synergy with profit organizations providing training services, the project will deliver an innovative multi-country model for building and reinforcing capacities and skills in NPOs working with/for Youth. 7 European countries and Brazil will be involved. A special attention will be reserved to NEETs and/or marginalized young who will be involved in learning activities at local and transnational level, according to a participatory and inclusive approach that guides, indeed, the overall implementation methodology. Volunteering has been increasing in EU, but differences in understanding its potential need to be reduced. Besides being relevant as a key-factor of cohesion for communities, it can produce a positive effect on youth employment, also reducing NEETs’ phenomenon. In this perspective, INNOVOL intends to support NPOs in better focusing on young people, both as volunteers and final beneficiaries of their action, encouraging active citizenship of Youth at local and European level.Through non-formal and informal learning activities, at local (YVOI-LABS & OTR-LABS) and transnational level (4 targeted mobility programs: Warsaw, Thessaloniki, Sofia, Rome), INNOVOL will address target groups leading them in a learning path that, harnessing the potential of peer-relation, will provide NPOs with innovative tools and methods for increasing their responsiveness towards Youth, letting emerge their educational and training needs, as well as their voice in the decision making processes and in associational life.Back from the mobility experiences, and through peer-learning, the 2 target groups will discuss and reflect on the ways to adapt the good practices learned to local needs and conditions. Study activities in the field of Young Voluntary Work will be carried out by all partners. The results of such activities, compared with those reported after the peer-learning experiences, will be then enucleated in the Guidelines that will finally provide a multi-country model for enhancing NPOs working with and for Youth. The INNOV-ALL docufilm will be produced editing all video contents self-made by participants during the whole project.The INNOVOL Platform will host all the results during and after the project life cycle, meant as a tool at the service of the Social Media Strategy itself, an as a place for networking, and sharing best practices in the field of Volunteering & Youth, also for all the stakeholders involved at transnational level, as a follow-up of the project.A large-scale Youth event in Slovenia will end the project, involving target groups and the general public, addressed at different level through a targeted communication campaign.
INNOVOL projects aimed at enhancing the management and the participated governance, innovation capacity and internationalization of NPOs that work with and for youth. Project targets have been mainly young volunteers (18-30 years old) and youth workers/trainers, involved in all the project activities at local and EU level. The main objective of the project was delivering an innovative methodology for building and reinforcing and make more professional volunteers’ carriers, starting from the reflection that innovative training tools and methods are useful also for the NPOs for enhancing transversal and soft skills of their own staff. Partners focused on the enhancement of volunteering, to be meant as the most tangible expression of solidarity, founding value of the EU itself, fostering young active citizenship at local and European level. Partners worked on how to reduce EU differences in understanding volunteerism needs, organizing training and learning of young volunteers and their trainers, creating, since the design phase, synergies between profit, no-profit organizations and local authorities, and sharing best practices.Consortium identified key-elements for the achievement of objectives and its follow up:a.Strengthening the links between the youth field, volunteering and the labor market, for a successful job placement by building/reinforcing soft and transversal skills.b.Fostering the use of training tools and methods, for enhancing the peer-relation and young people in need inclusion.c.Encouraging the recognition of the Young Voluntary Practice, also through a synergy with policy makers at different levels.d.Supporting young people aspirations and encouraging their active citizenship, enhancing intercultural exchanges, voluntary abroad experiences, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by EU.INNOVOL starts from a study phase on state of art in the field of YWV (Act. 2.2), providing relevant elements about different needs of volunteers and NPOs and approaches, identifying also best practices and methodologies to be replied and used.The project presented 3 different levels, to be considered as a circle - 1. Local level; 2. Transnational level; 3. Local level (again) – for 2 different target groups (Youth and Youth workers).The first level – for both beneficiaries - was characterized by non-formal learning as a voluntary learning that take place in diverse environments and situations, freely created and organized by partners. YOUR VOICE LABs (Act. 2.1) - for youth – had common elements for the partners: they started from a self-assessment of young volunteers involved and the reflection on their role as volunteers in NPOs and their training needs in order to improve NPOs development and governance, as key actor for the civil society. ON THE ROAD LABs (Act 3.1) - for youth workers – were a combination of peer-learning and learning-by-doing addressed to the target group, ensuring exchange and sharing of experiences among trainers and operators. The second transnational level was characterized by the 2 groups of mobilities: Youth exchange (Act. 2.3) and Youth Workers Mobility (Act. 3.2). The third level culminated again at local level, though the comparison of lessons learnt among peers for better addressing local needs and challenges: Y-VOI PEER for Youth (Act. 2.4) and ON THE ROAD PEER for youth workers (Act. 3.3). The development of local models for a participated governance of NPOs were standardized within the Guidelines (WP4), starting from specific local needs highlighted by Consortium and in the perspective of fostering quality in volunteering and increasing young people’s active participation in associational life and decision-making processes. At the end of the project, a very big large-scale event (WP5) in Novo mesto involved European participants and local young people, spreading the importance of being volunteers and of participating in the social life of their own communit