Solidarités Jeunesses proposed a follow up of the project Changing Perspectives: measuring and showing the impact of volunteering that developed and has been implementing questionnaires to measure the impact of volunteering. The project continued the work done and further developed it by a better support in the implementation of the already existing tools but also by going further in tackling the following questions:-How to improve the visibility of International Voluntary Service?-How to better valorise our projects among stakeholders and the society in general?-How the volunteers can acknowledge, appropriate and express the learnings they acquired during a voluntary project?The idea was also to work on an evaluation and auto-evaluation of our projects by looking deeper at what we do, how we do it and what impact does it create. With the answers to those questions, we (as voluntary organisations) were able to improve our work, our methods and best practices and the impact that it creates.The project gathered 11 voluntary organisations and one university, the University of Illinois. The project included a training for programme managers and sending officers on how to use the existing tools. A seminar was organised to reflect on how to use the results in order to better valorise our projects and according to those results, how to improve our methods.The second phase of the project consisted in the implementation of the tools in International Voluntary Service projects of all partners organisations. Together with the collection of data and results, a final conference was held to assess the results and further steps to take.

The unemployement rate of youth in Europe was in the time when this project was shaped very urgent issue. It was connected with the fact that the youth and youth workers struggled to understand and mainly present non-formal learning and volunteering as activities building soft skills which are important for labour market and labour market lacked awareness and acceptance of volunteering as source of competencies and experience of their young job candidates. Therefore the project “Youth Employability via Volunteering” was focusing on increasing employability of young people by raising acknowledgement of competences gained through volunteering. The project targeted young volunteers, youth workers and also representatives of labour market (mainly companies, but also labour offices) by following activities: - networking among all project stakeholders, - researching in-depth the current status of how the labour market perceives volunteering - results available at https://www.inexsda.cz/docs/volunteering-and-labour-market-research-youth-employability-via-volunteering.pdf- joint collaboration on upgrade of innovative competences tracking application IM-PROVE linking it with other existing tools such as Europass and Youthpass and their acknowledgement and usage by all three target groups (volunteers, youth workers and labour market) - available at improve.inexsda.cz and in App Store (iOS) and Play Store (Android)- capacitating youth workers to use such self-reflection/tracking tools as part of their daily work and providing them with easy to use e-handbook on how to do so - available at handbook.inexsda.czThe project was realised by INEX-SDA (Czech Republic) together with Zavod Voluntariat (Slovenia) and Solidarités Jeunesses (France), organisations, which work together more than a decade on various projects concerning volunteering, non-formal education, employability issues and global learning. The project was also envisaged to target interested stakeholders in respective countries (civil service, ministries, companies, youth organisations, other NGOs working with youth and volunteering…) whom we cooperated with and / or presented the results of the project and discussed about further cooperation.

Recognition of non-formal education in the formal system is one of the priority topics of European educational policies. The main reason is that non-formal education can flexibly respond to the needs of learners and develop the competences one needs to fulfill his/her roles in society and the labour market. Some of these are rarely developed in the formal education context (e.g., communication, cultural openness, decision-making, problem-solving, critical thinking), that’s why the universities are looking for ways to update their education systems to tackle more these competences of their studentsThe partner organisations of this project (INEX-SDA Czechia, IBG Germany, YAP Italy) have been part of the already 100 years old International Voluntary Service (IVS) movement, which connects the non-formal learning of young people with traditional volunteering activities (workcamps). By participating or leading such projects, young people vastly develop the above-mentioned competences, and therefore recognition of the programmes these NGOs develop helps the universities fulfill their curricula. Moreover, by this project, the NGOs had the opportunity to precise and increase the quality of the educational programme they are offering.The participants of this project (young people - future youth workers, currently students at the partner universities) went through an educational programme, consisting of: A) Training for leaders of voluntary projects B) Preparation phase, C) Leading the 2-3 week long activity, D) International multiplicators’ training E) follow-up multiplication activities. This cycle was based on non-formal education and was focused on the essential competences of these participants as well as on proper multiplication of their experiences among young people they work with and their peers. We piloted this cycle of activities twice (in 2019 in the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy with a final international reflection and multiplication activity in the Czech Republic; and in 2021 in the Czech Republic, Germany and France with a final international reflection and multiplication in Germany. All together, we involved around 70 young people directly. Thanks to the implementation of these activities, we properly elaborated on our activities in detail in pedagogical terminology. We described them properly and monitored the learning outcomes young people gained out of their participation. Having the research findings, it made it easier to start to speak the same “language” with the universities. As a result, we started working on systemic recognition of the non-formal education volunteering programme inside official curricula with more than 10 universities in the mentioned countries, while aiming to reach even more universities in the future by continuous work with the project results.Aim of the project was therefore to bridge formal and non-formal learning to support high-quality education in general and in youth work specifically by training multiplicators who will share about their experience and connect even more NGOs and universities. Our vision is to build many of such cooperation with an aim to help building an educated and conscious new generation.The objectives and target groups of the project were as follows:- to make young people and university teachers understand and experience the non-formal education approach - its nature, advantages and impact- to develop the competences of young people, complementary to those acquired during the formal education and to introduce them to the topics of voluntary work, active citizenship, critical thinking etc., to complete their profiles as qualified educated people and to let them to apply all the experiences in their work with young people - to motivate the young people attending this project to become active multipliers among their peers and teachers at universities, and among the young people they work with - to build trust and long-term cooperation between NGOs and Universities leading towards future recognition of the non-formal education programme based on volunteering in formal curricula - to build capacities of NGOs directly and indirectly involved (via international networks) in proficient methodical and pedagogical description of their non-formal education programmes. As a result of this project, we created an impact study on the educational programme – a research report on what competencies young people develop together with its methodological description (IO1 - the impact study), a short documentary movie explaining the whole educational process (IO1 - documentary movie) and a good practice handbook, which will be used mainly by universities and NGOs all over Europe so they can get inspired from our best practises and results (IO2 - good practice booklet) accompanied by session plans to the weekend training for project leaders (IO2 - weekend training methodology).

"REC-THINK project aims at developing tools and methodologies to involve rural youth in the process of “re-think” themselves and their role in the future of their localities. To achivie this, it will be used the Participatory Video as an innovative tool for the collective expression, in such a way press REC will be the first step in the construction of sustainable alternatives to these young people in their regions.A significant part of the rural areas in Europe is experiencing a strong process of depopulation and a gradual aging of the population in rural areas. This is the same situation for the partners’ countries: France, Portugal, Spain and Italy.These phenomena have negative consequences for both the personal development of young people and for the whole area and its economic and social perspective. In this sense, REC-THINK seeks to create a new strategy for working with young people in rural areas, which, together with these organizations, form the main target groups. It is intended that young people in rural areas will be the voice of their regions, expanding their knowledge and skills with an active dimension, participation and action, breaking geographical isolation and creating a network that serves as a point of collaboration, reflection and consolidation of social relations.Therefore this strategic partnership aims to:1. Develop methodologies and training tools to promote empowerment, participation and integral development of rural youth in Europe through the participatory video tool.2. Create a virtual community for exchanging experience, strategies and generating sustainable alternative for European rural areas, with the involvement of young participants, stakeholders and members of organizations as key actors.3.Train young participantes to become active agents in the processes of political and economic transformation, through the development of digital and communicative skills.4.Train workers of the participant organisations in the developed tools and methodologies.To achieve these objectives the project will foresee the following activities:-Management, coordination and communication activities.-Development of a methodological guide for the implementation of innovative strategies to promote the participation of young people in rural areas through participatory video-Development of a training path for the promotion of transversal skills in rural areas: technology and communication-Development of a methodological guide for the development of collaborative projects among rural youth-Training activities targeted to rural youth to promote their empowerment and participation through a participatory video as an innovative tool-Learning activity targeted to workers in the field of youth through the exchange and transfer of ICT tools and communication techniques -Celebration of thee forum ""How slow the isolation of rural youth through the development of technological and communication skills""Besides the intellectual results that will be developed through the first three activities, the REC-THINK project foresees other outcomes such as:-Elaboration of a WEB-DOC-Consolidation of a community of actors involved in rural development-Four short documentaries prepared by the young participants in the project, around the theme of needs and vulnerabilities of their region.-Digital -review: young participants draw up a report in multimedia format on the specific subject (resources and collective heritage) The expected impacts are the following:-Improving skills, methods and tools for the organizations participants to work with young people in rural areas, in order to promote social and political participation organizations.-Empowerment and personal development of the young participants through the development of communication and digital skills.-Extended partnership for the development of new projects and joint initiatives in these areas of activity.-Improved local development of the regions participating in the project and possible regions and organizations tahat adopt tools developed in REC-THINK.-Visibility of the alternatives for local development in rural areas and the role of youth in these processes as protagonists and not as mere recipients."

“Learning, Acting, Creating and Educating for Sustainable Development Goals” (LACE for SDGs) was an innovating project that aimed to address and give solution to the issues that are mentioned in 17 SDGs by involving youth initiative through a complete cycle of raising awareness of SDGs, training course and project piloting and evaluating. The project mainly targeted at youth, NGOs and the community, where youths live and struggle with problems in term of environment, human rights, poverty, etc. with the implementation between the two continents Europe and Asia in order to have the variety of innovation ideas to deal with problems that occur in daily lives.By using non-formal education methodology and youth-approach techniques, LACE for SDGs encouraged and inspired youth to contribute in achieving SDGs in their own community particularly, and their country in general. The two main objectives were described as:1)Contribute to the achievement of SDGs in the sphere of youth involvement.2)Strengthen and empower the Europe-Asia cooperationLACE for SDGs encouraged youth initiatives and youth inclusion by supporting and promoting democratic life in alignment of SDGs theme. The project provided the complete cycle to increase youth competencies and therefore foster professional development of staff and youth worker in ICT methodologies.Timetable for each activity realized in the project:1. Initial meeting 03-05.11.2017 November 20172. Call for submission 01.12.2017 – 28.02.2018 December-2017/ January-2018/February-20183. Training course 07-13.04.2018 April 20184. Piloting 01.05 – 30.07.2018 May / June /July 20185. Evaluation meeting 06-10.09.2018 August 2018