The ongoing public consultation is about how to make it easier for young people taking part in volunteering projects around the EU, including under the European Solidarity Corps.

European Youth Volunteering over Europe

The public consultation aims to:

• remove administrative, legal and financial barriers;
• clarify expectations towards organisations involved in multi-country projects;
• help these organisations build capacity to deliver safe, high-quality activities with real educational value.

The roadmap of it saw a first feedback period back in February 2021, with plenty of feedbacks received from youth organisations. Now the official public consultation is open. It runs until 21st July 2021. The European Commission is asking for opinions and feedbacks on how EU countries can make it easier for young people to take part in volunteering projects in countries other than their own and therefore requiring cross border travel.

There is a questionnaire to fill in.

Purpose of the Public Consultation

The new initiative’s aims to:

• address the obstacles to youth cross-border volunteering and solidarity to facilitate a smooth functioning and enhance the impact of the European Solidarity Corps;
• propose policy guidance to increase the inclusiveness, quality and recognition of the European Solidarity Corps and its cross-border volunteering and solidarity activities;
• support information and involvement in cross-border solidarity activities for young volunteers;
• support complementarity between civic and volunteering schemes in Member States and the European Solidarity Corps;
• provide incentives for mutual learning and networking among Member States.

Fit for Future Platform

Generally speaking, the Commission would like to hear your views on laws and policies currently in development. Click on an initiative to find out more, view feedback, or give your own feedback. Please note that the Commission may decide to modify or abandon an initiative at any time.

Under the whole initiative of getting feedback through public consultations, there is also the Fit for Future Platform. The Fit for Future Platform is a high-level expert group that will help the Commission in its efforts to simplify EU laws and to reduce related unnecessary costs. The Commission takes into account the Platform’s opinions to ensure EU laws help, not hinder, people.

You can contribute to the work of the Platform on the Have Your Say: Simplify! portal. Have a look at the list of topics in the work programme and share your ideas to increase their digitalisation potential, to simplify procedures and obligations linked to labelling, authorisations and reporting, or to avoid overlaps or uncertainty. You can also propose new topics.

Read also

Erasmus+ Project Quality Assessment Guide

Training for Organisation and Staff

L'articolo Public Consultation on European Youth Volunteering proviene da Youth Networks.

Prior to read any further, you can check out the news on the ESC Internship & Jobs not being renovated or have a look at a general evaluation on the European Solidarity Corps Programme. 

Quality Label of the Lead Organisation 

The Quality Label as Lead Organisation is now mandatory to lead an ESC project.
Since its beginning, back in 2018, the European Solidarity Corps Programme has been allowing the more experienced organisations to apply for the “Volunteering Partnership”. Such feature consisted in submitting a 3-years plan about the ESC activities the organisation would had been in charge of, over that time. After approval, the organisations faced just one deadline per year to ask for funding to the activities to carry out on the following year. Such activities had to resonate with the ones on the 3-years plan. As a consequence, on the contributions’ request you could have found less boxes to fill out, as the qualitative selection happen backwards on the initial phase. 

What was optional in the two-years period 2018-2020, is now the only way forward to be applicant organisation for ESC projects. Therefore, what was once only for bigger organisations, is now is the one-option over either individual volunteering projects and volunteering teams. 

Such transformation comes from the new Quality Label: the one of the Lead Organisation, called “ESC50”. 

The New Procedure

To submit your request for contributions to fund ESC volunteering projects and volunteering teams is now necessary, firstly, to apply for the Quality Label ESC50. As a consequence, there is no need to own the accreditation before the deadline, but just to have submitted the request for accreditation
The further step is to proceed with the funding request through the code ESC51.

Such procedure is necessary for ESC volunteering projects and volunteering teams, contrary to the Solidarity Projects (no accreditation requested). 

Main features of the Quality Label as Lead Organisation

To submit the request ESC50, the applying organisation has to deliver a request similar to the one of the Erasmus+ accreditation. Similarly, the submission provides a multi-year plan of activities. It can cover from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 7 years.
The accreditation refers to the organisation in general, covering the management of volunteering activities hosted by the requesting organisation or coordinating activities by the hosting organisations.
As such, the new accreditation allows to be Lead Organisation being at the same time Host and Coordinating Organisation (as provided by the old European Voluntary Service). The Lead Organisation can request contributions with reference to hosting mobility and coordination in its country, but also to outgoing mobility and coordination to send volunteers abroad.

How To Get the Accreditation as Lead Organisation

A tricky feature is surely the Standard Activities description. 

This box needs to be filled out with the volunteering activities carried out by the volunteers hosted by the organisation itself. In other words, this is the room for activities of incoming mobility and not the coordinating activities upon other organisations (both in your country and abroad). Keep an eye on that, the queries on such activities are much and complex. Indeed, such queries replicate the accreditation process for the quality label as hosting entity. Pay extreme attention to this section, as it represents the prior evaluation. After that, all the organisations will have a multi-year plan. And once received the Quality Label, they won’t have to write articulate projects.

Read also

A Glance Through The Erasmus+ Guide

L'articolo ESC 2021-2027: Quality Label of the Lead Organisation proviene da Youth Networks.