“STEP to the future: From empowerment to resilience in the IVS movement” aims at empowering the International Voluntary Service -IVS- movement (its networks, organisations, professionals and activists) through the extension of organisational development training in Asia, Africa, America, Europe. Capacity building in organisational management was defined as a crosscutting priority in the White Paper of IVS 2011-21, and since then the CCIVS has been attempting to perform continous training on these issues. Now, that it is clear that a long-term Empowerment and Monitoring system for the members is needed, the network has developed a powerful organisational development training method, the STEP (Strategic Training for Empowerment Processes). This method proved to be successful during 2017 and 2018, and STEP to the Future is an opportunity to keep bringing this learning among members worldwide: a learning based on their own assessment, on the experiences of similar organisations in their regions and beyond, and which leads to strategic planning. The challenge for this project is to go beyond training specific people/organisations, but to start establishing a net, an organised group of prepared trainers, networks, organisations who can keep developing organisational development training in the 4 regions. That is why, a training for trainers in the topic is a basic to advance from: 25 professionals will be trained, from the 4 regions and also including members of the pool of trainers of different networks. Besides the TfT, a MOOC will be launched, aiming at arriving to as many organisations as possible in the future; though for the launching there will be a facilitated experience with the 23 partner organisations of the project. Besides this, there will be new STEP regional trainings in Africa and Asia, and on-field experiences in these regions and also in Europe, including local trainings and job-shadowings. In order to ensure a real processual empowerment, follow-up for trainers and participants is foreseen to be developed by experts in the project. As well, such support will also be provided for those trainers who are encouraged to apply and find new funds in their regions that can allow to perform new STEP experiences in a decentralised scheme: more multilaterality and more decentralisation. In the end, “STEP to the future” is willing to contribute to establish a long term process that will make the IVS movement stronger, more resilient, with their organisations being more able to resist and transform their main challenges, and in this way increase the positive impact that has been proven to be brought by international volunteering: increased intercultural capacities, active participation in the community, non-violent conflict resolution, and community development through practical work.
This project is developed based on the direction of the White Paper for International Voluntary Service (IVS) 2011-2021 regarding Capacity Building and Impact, and in the decision of the General Assembly 2014 to establish a Monitoring and Empowerment System for the CCIVS. Following the 2017-2018 project STEPS to Change (www.ccivs.org/steps), the present project STEPS to the Future brought Organisational Development (OD) training and impact measurement to 20 organisations in 4 regions, allowing the building of a global and regional diagnosis on the State of the Art of the International Voluntary Service movement. Through STEPS, CCIVS aimed at expanding and consolidating the empowerment process in four regions. With the support of Erasmus+, 22 partners (including 3 international and regional networks Service Civil International, Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisation and Network for Voluntary Development in Asia) from Asia, Africa, Europe and America came together to cooperate in this project, which not only strengthened their own capacity through a series of offline and online trainings and job-shadowing in peer organisation but also benefited from their experience and contribution to the refinement of tools on Organisational Development for IVS organisations. The main objectives were to:-increase the competencies of youth professionals / youth organisations;-improve the cooperation for strategic objectives among the IVS networks;-generate high-quality tools, methods and mechanisms that support such empowerment and monitoring within the network/movement.In order to reach the objectives, the project incorporated the following four phases:1.Launching the Process:-Steering Team Meeting & Experts Seminar in Estonia hosted by EstYes, January 2019.2.Setting the Capacities:-Training for Trainers on Organisational Development in Italy hosted by YAP Italy, May 2019.3.Implement Global Empowerment-On-Field Training Exchanges & Job-shadowing in Europe, May 2019;-Diagnosis & Training on Organisational Development in Africa hosted by VWAN Nigeria and in Asia hosted by VSA Thailand;-MOOC Production Laboratory in Hungary hosted by Egysek, October 2019;-Online Course on Organisational Development for IVS Organisations (STEPS MOOC) launched, January 2020;-Webinar Series, September – November 2020.4.Consolidate and Scale-Monitoring mechanism;-Support measure on organisational sustainability;-Dissemination and future strategies meetings.The project approach and methodologies are innovative and it was a significant step in terms of the evolution and sustainable development of both CCIVS and the International Voluntary Service movement. It was CCIVS’s first time to organise a Training for Trainers on Organisational Development and develop a MOOC on Organisational Development that could reach a much larger target group. The project also mainstreamed “interculturality” throughout its process and incorporated it in the organisational development and monitoring methodology. It’s important to highlight that the consortium reacted promptly and adequately to the COVID-19 pandemic which imposed travel restriction and lockdown policies and brought a great impact on the management and organisation of youth mobility and capacity building work of many organisations and networks in the International Voluntary Service. CCIVS and its partners have actively engaged themselves to make full use of the project tools and outcomes and look for means to diffuse these products that would be beneficial to more individuals and organisations who want to increase their capacities.The project chronicle magazine gives a more detailed overview and highlights of outcomes, & available on http://bit.ly/STEPS2-chronicle.