C.L.I.C., for “Coordinating Locally in order to Increase More Changes with the European solidarity Corps”, is a cooperation partnership that gathers 10 like-minded organisations from 9 European countries. All of us are labelled hosting and support organisations of the European Solidarity Corps. We put in common our long experience in youth work and international volunteering in order to foster capacity building and innovation in our daily work.
The implementation of the European Solidarity Corps (ESC), since its initial launch in 2018, provoked a shift, as well as created new opportunities for European volunteering. If the preceding “European Voluntary Service” (EVS) was always integrated as part of the educational and youth activities supported by the European Commission, the ESC is set up as a separate programme, giving its major focus on solidarity and aiming at the involvement of the young people around this common value. This “stand alone” offers the programme a better self-identity and represents a clever way to involve new organisations, from the broader solidarity sector and not connected to education or youth. Nevertheless, it may also create a new distance from the methods and the philosophy of youth work, which guides and sustains the support provided to the young people in the course of their volunteering.
Our partnership of cooperation, that gathers 10 organisations with a long experience in youth and international volunteering, is driven by the conviction that this support to the young volunteers must be better developed and emphasized at all levels (towards the young people themselves; the organisations and the institutions involved in the solidarity corps). This conviction is fed by the expertise that most of the partners have gained along their daily work with volunteers and local partners, as well as the accurate needs they are nevertheless closely facing. In that way, our partnership of cooperation is an invitation to better embrace the whole scope of volunteering within the European Solidarity Corps, from a clear bottom-up approach and with the strong will to participate in the elaboration of an even-more impactful programme.
At this purpose, our project aims at enriching and making more visible the role played by coordinating organisations (support and lead-organisations, according to the current terms) in the implementation of the ESC. It is based on the initial assumption that this role is currently underestimated, and consequently, underused by the programme stakeholders while showing essential features in order to make the impact of European volunteering manifold.
The coordinating 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: they can facilitate their networking, liaise the different field realities and bring additional guarantees for shared quality standards.
The coordinating organisations are in a key-position to back-up and to move forward the educational framework of European youth volunteering. Our partnership of cooperation aims to prepare and to better equip the organisations for such a key position, while elaborating possible evolvements of the European Solidarity Corps to be considered for the next generation of the programme.
At this regards, we focus on 4 specific objectives:
- To equip the organisations with new references and tools to support the volunteering experience of the young people on all its dimensions (holistic approach). The programme is well shaped by quality standards (ESC charter; label system; trainings and resources widely available…). Nevertheless, the field workers often miss references in their day to day work with the volunteers, especially once we turn to the personal and social support to provide (management of living places; meetings with locals; intercultural learning; activation of peer-support to foster inclusion of YWFO…). Our project will address this gap by identifying and disseminating the practices that contribute to a meaningful and global life experience for the young volunteers.
- “To define new coordinating schemes and support to the involvement of local programme stakeholders”. The ESC programme is featured by its openness to any organisations involved in the solidarity sector. The multiplication of actors involved demands a related multiplication of the support provided to these organisations, with the clear challenge to maintain a growing eco-system around the central character of the young volunteer. Our project wants to address this challenge by reinforcing the role of mentors thanks to new training opportunities, flexible and easily accessible at a local level.
- “To test and to analyse new perspectives of support to the initiatives of the young people in the course of their volunteering”. The young volunteers make a difference. They bring new ideas and additional resources to their hosting organisations and local communities. The expression of their solidarity, through volunteering, reinforces their active citizenship and shapes the impact they will have on the society in the long run. Their commitment serves the visibility of the programme. Along our project, we wish to shape a renewed support to the volunteers’ personal projects and, by that way, bring new mile-stones to back-up and emphasize these powerful assets.
- “At the term of the project, we want to offer concrete and evidences-based proposals to strengthen the European Solidarity Corps and to inspire the decisions-makers”. We want to contribute to the forthcoming political discussions on the next programme (beyond 2027), by bringing forth the experiences and tested solutions from field workers.