While discussions are ongoing about the next Multiannual Financial Framework of the European Union, we are inviting you to envision a systemic strengthening of the European Solidarity Corps, by developing civic society involvement and impact in the programme. We find it important to reinforce the role of the coordinating (LEAD) organisations and equip them for this purpose. The LEAD organisations have a major role in the involvement of local organisations in the ESC as well as supporting the non-formal learning of volunteers and fostering volunteering communities.
C.L.I.C., for “Coordinating Locally in order to Increase More Changes with the European Solidarity Corps”, is a cooperation partnership that gathered ten experienced coordinating organisations from nine European countries along the year 2023, 2024 and 2025. Together, we worked on enriching and making the role of LEAD organisations more visible in the implementation of the European Solidarity Corps (ESC).
This role is currently underestimated, and consequently, underused by the programme stakeholders while the LEAD organisations have potential to increase the impact of ESC volunteering.
The LEAD organisations are the ones who, at the local and regional levels, can ensure a swift dissemination of methods and tools. They are located in a strategic place between the volunteers, the partners and the national agencies. Hence, they can facilitate their networking, liaise the different field realities and bring additional guarantees for shared quality standards. The LEAD organisations are in a key position to support and foster the educational aspect of ESC volunteering.
To demonstrate this, we focused on 4 specific objectives and reached the following achievements :
1. Highlighting best practices of volunteering
The personal and social dimensions of ESC volunteering need to be addressed. Volunteering is a powerful non-formal learning experience with high potential for capacity building, personal development and further social commitment of young people. Volunteering within the ESC is a holistic experience that requires guidance and support at all stages and various levels.
To meet these needs and to support the unfolding of each project’s and participant’s potential, we gathered commonly defined best practices from 10 different organisations to provide a comprehensive collection of high-quality practices, i.e. tools and methods that can be used by the volunteers, mentors, and organisations to support the volunteering experience on various levels and to increase its overall impact. The topics of the best practices include daily community life, inclusion at home, social and cultural life, sustainable lifestyle, support, and logistics.
Throughout the project, we also tested an application called “ESC Buddy”, which is a digital application created by an ESC volunteer in CBB to support the engagement of volunteers in their projects, interconnect them and facilitate the communication between volunteers and organizations. Ten partner organisations tested the tool and it has proven to support their work and communication with the volunteers in many ways, for example related Youthpass.
Our deliverable, the “Cookbook of best practices” including the collection of inspiring “recipes” for supporting volunteering projects and their participants is publicly available on the CLIC project’s website.
| Our key-message: Volunteering is a learning experience where young people need support at all stages and at various levels of the project. The valuable role of LEAD organisations is often underestimated. Our best practices show that LEAD organisations take charge of a wide variety of tasks related to ESC projects and provide invaluable support both to volunteers and their hosting organisations, practically accompanying them throughout the duration of their service. Hence, it is vital that LEAD organisations receive adequate funding as they help to multiply the impact of ESC programme. |
2. Strengthening the role of mentorship
Mentorship has a key role in ensuring the success of each ESC project. Mentors need proper training in order to adequately support the wellbeing of the volunteers. It’s important to acknowledge that mental health challenges among young people are strongly increasing, (see more here) which highlights the importance of mentoring in ESC projects. Moreover, organisations need to have better information on how to implement mentoring.
We explored the needs of mentors through focus groups which were conducted in each of the CLIC partner countries and based on the results we developed training for mentors and other supporting persons. We tested the training with about 100 mentors and created an easily replicable and adaptable training package for organisations to use in their local contexts.
Our deliverable, the handbook for the one-day training on mentoring, with each training sessions described in details and all the material ready-to-be used, is downloadable from this website (tools and handbooks section).
| Our key-message: Offering local training to mentors and other actors involved in the support of ESC volunteers is the most efficient way to widely raise the quality of mentoring. LEAD organisations need to be ensured enough resources to be able to deliver training at local level. This will significantly contribute to the quality of support offered to both volunteers and host organisations. Local training also ensures that mentors feel a sense of community and not isolated as they are able to get peer support from other mentors. Furthermore, organising easily accessible local training brings the ESC programme closer to mentors working on the field. It provides an opportunity to create and foster local networks between mentors and civil society organisations and empowers them to be active at the European level. |
3. Blooming up volunteers’ personal projects
Young volunteers make a difference. They bring new ideas and additional resources to their hosting organisations and local communities. Volunteers’ personal projects can bring these ideas into life. A structured and systematic support to the volunteer’s personal projects increases the impact and visibility of the ESC programme and enhances the non-formal learning of young people.
With the CLIC partnership, we organised two international labs where the volunteers were given support to realise their potential, transform their ideas into projects, and evaluate them later. Based on the experiences of volunteers, we created a guidebook to support implementing personal projects, so any organization can accompany volunteers in their community impact.
We accompanied 78 volunteers in carrying out their own personal projects of solidarity. The volunteers could also apply for a small grant (max 500€) to cover the costs of the project. Most volunteers achieved great results even by not using the whole grant, suggesting that the most important factor in achieving high-impact personal projects is to clearly invite the young people to take initiatives, to provide them with time to develop their own ideas and to offer them a flexible way of support.
As deliverable, the personal blog of volunteering stories is available on our website (volunteers’solidarity stories website). Our guidebook for youth workers will be at your disposal by December 2025 in tools and handbook section.
| Our key-message Implementing personal projects teaches young people valuable skills about project management, budgeting, and communication. Giving them resources to implement their ideas has a significant impact on the volunteers, providing them an opportunity to develop a strong set of skills which will benefit them later in working life and studies. Moreover, the volunteers’personal projects have a concrete impact on the local communities by targeting their more specific needs. They also increase the visibility of the ESC programme within the communities. LEAD organisations have an important educational role in guiding the volunteers through the different phases of their personal projects. We propose that a lump sum for personal projects is included in the ESC budget for both volunteers and the LEAD organisations as well as some guidelines for volunteers and organisations on how to implement or support personal projects. |
4. Opening up new perspectives for the ESC
Development of the ESC programme should stem from the real needs from organisations and communities involved in the programme.
LEAD organisations are experts in organising impactful volunteering projects and have valuable grass root experience, hearing the needs of both volunteers and local organisations.
With the CLIC partnership, we have gathered here six additional proposals to further develop the ESC programme
| Our 6 additional proposals ✓ Support large-scale LEAD organizations: Considering the high impact of large LEAD organisations, the financial support for coordination should be increased. Larger LEAD organizations would benefit from a multi-year funding decision to increase the quality and sustainability as well as to develop new working methods. ✓ Increase the unit costs of the ESC programme to correspond Erasmus+ programmes: At the moment, Erasmus+ formal education and Youth have significantly higher unit costs compared to the ESC programme, despite the costs of organising mobility activities remaining the same. Having higher funding would strengthen the civil society organisations and encourage new organisations to participate in the ESC programme. ✓ Clarify and duly recognize the role of sending organization: The sending organisations are necessary in ensuring high-quality volunteering projects. Hence, we need to have a set of clear obligations for sending organisations. These would include for example compulsory measures to support the visibility and dissemination of the project, minimum number of meetings, role expected in administrative support, orientation and preparation to a project. ✓ We strongly support the demand for sending activity cost (SAC): Currently it is difficult to offer sending organisations adequate financial support. We suggest standardising the amount of SAC to avoid the need to negotiate the sum individually with each organisation. The sum should be sufficient to ensure that SOs can better prepare the volunteers and cover staff and other costs even in case of early termination of term volunteering activity, short term projects or volunteering teams. ✓ Clarify and support the role of mentoring: Mentoring should be duly recognised in the ESC programme. To ease the burden of individual mentors, we should talk about mentoring rather than mentor’s role and sustain adequate mentoring support networks for the volunteers rather than counting on individuals. To clarify the role, we could benefit from existing tools, like the mentoring competence framework (by SALTO). Local mentoring trainings are an important part of developing high-quality mentoring, organised by LEAD organisations or National Agencies depending on the local context. ✓ Solidarity should not stop at the EU borders. Partner countries bring significant added value to the projects for both directions. If we talk about solidarity, the programme should not be focused only on Europe/EU countries. We should explore how to ease the visa process for volunteers coming from partner countries. Promoting an opened programme to young people from visa countries also participate to the promotion of European values such as democracy and human rights. ✓ Acknowledge the increased impact of long-term volunteering. Long-term volunteering provides skills and knowledge which cannot be achieved during a shorter period. Thus, we find it important to maintain long-term projects as the main form of ESC volunteering. At the same time, we acknowledge the value of volunteering teams and short term projects especially for young people with fewer opportunities. A volunteers statut should better recognize the engagement of the young people. |