The project aims to become a tool to implement the recent council conclusions on the Mobility of Young Volunteers and Cross-Border Solidarity.

This will be achieved by a series of activities to strengthen the visibility of volunteering in the programme and foster the collaboration on volunteering and solidarity among stakeholders. Different activities will support the development of European volunteering and strengthen the cooperation in Europe and beyond.

Objectives

• Increasing the knowledge about the European Solidarity Corps programme and its impact
• Supporting the knowledge exchange around European volunteering and solidarity
• Advocating for better conditions for European volunteering
• Increasing the visibility of European volunteering
• Fostering the collaboration among stakeholders and strengthening the community(ies) of practise

Background and Needs

With the new programme generation starting 2021, the European Solidarity Corps programme has undergone a shift towards a pure volunteering scheme for local and international volunteering.

There is a need to explore the following questions together as a network of National Agencies:

• What does the shift to volunteering imply for the community of practice?
• What are the new trends? What are the risks?
• How can we improve the conditions for different strands of the ESC (Individual, Teams, Solidarity Projects) and look deeper into complementarity of national and EU volunteering?
• What is needed to strengthen European volunteering?

Find the all documents here.

Read also

Call for Evidence | Have Your Say on the Erasmus Plus Programme

Research on volunteer-based youth work

L'articolo SNAC | Strategic National Agencies’ Cooperation 2022–2027 proviene da Youth Networks.

How To Manage European Projects in Ukraine and Russia

The European Commission has provided the National Agencies responsible for the management of the Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps programmes with the first useful indications for the management of the critical issues following the crisis in Ukraine.
The Agencies can apply the “force-majeure clause” in mobility projects involving Ukraine and Russia.
While respecting the general legal framework of the Programmes, the beneficiaries are therefore entitled to

1. cancel, postpone or relocate planned activities in Ukraine and Russia;
2. cancel, postpone or move incoming mobility activities of participants from Ukraine and Russia.

Activities and Projects in Ukraine and Russia

• Ongoing mobilities to Ukraine or Russia involving participants from Member States or Associated Third Countries: the force-majeure clause may be invoked to prematurely terminate activities taking place in Ukraine or Russia.
  Sending organisations should support participants returning early from these countries by checking with the host organisation/body whether they can continue the activities in virtual mode.
  Return costs will be justified and charged as exceptional costs, if duly reported to the Agency. In case no exceptional costs are foreseen in the project budget, participating organisations can draw on the funds under the heading Organisational support.
• Incoming mobility to Member States and Associated Third Countries involving Ukrainian participants: beneficiaries are encouraged to verify the possibility of prolonging the stay of the Ukrainian participants in the ongoing activities in accordance with the rules of the Programmes. To this end, they may also receive further support and advice from the National Agencies in their relations with the authorities.
• Planned activities in Ukraine: beneficiaries of planned mobility projects in Ukraine are invited to check alternative options (such as changing the country of destination) or, if possible, to transform the mobility activity into a hosting one (hosting Ukrainian participants).

To request support or clarifications, to send communications on projects and activities related to the two programmes Erasmus+|Youth and European Solidarity Corps, you can contact your National Agency. Each Agency is monitoring each specific situation in cooperation with the other European agencies and competent authorities.

We will be keeping this post up-to-date if anything new comes up.

L'articolo Ukraine: How To Manage European Projects as Provided by the European Commission proviene da Youth Networks.

• encouraging the participation of young people in democratic life in Europe;
• promoting equal participation of young women and men;
• including diverse voices and ensuring that all young people are able to contribute to policy-shaping.

The goal

The main goal of the guidelines is to provide an orientation for such dialogue. The European Youth Strategy stated a certain flexibility for the member States in order to implement the key elements of the EUYD, in the framework of the following measures (see pt. 3 of the official document):

• Building on experiences from the past;
• Aiming at a clearer and leaner process
• Preferably follow 18-months work-cycles;
• One thematic priority per cycle;
• Its Work Plan;
• Flexibility with regard to the actors taking part in the governance and implementation of the EUYD;
• Continuous follow-up to monitor quality outcomes and the impact of the whole process;
• Recognition of the role of National Working Groups. They are the entities at Member State level, that are tasked with contributing to the organisation of consultations, promotion and impact of the dialogue with youth.

The roles

What is clear here is the main role of the member states, that are strongly driven to enable the participation of the young people to the dialogue. For this purpose, National Working groups are being created (see pt. 13 of the document), that are meant to collaborate closely with the Young Working Party at European level. The works would ideally last for cycles of 18 months each.

Great flexibility is given to the member states for this, keeping in mind the guidelines provided by the European Youth Strategy and the suggestions of the Trio Presidency (this resolution is going to take effect from July 2019, so the one starting from the next semester). The Trio plays a leading role for the implementation of the EUYD. It shall work in cooperation with the European Commission and European Youth Forum as for the European level, and with the National Agencies and civil society representatives, as for the national one.

A coordinating group will fill the gap between the two levels: the so-called European Steering group (ESG, see pt. 9 of the document). It will have the task of connecting the institutions and their bodies to the needs and demands of the people they represent, through the filter of the member states. It will be an additional guarantee of equality and representativeness, since it’s meant to have a special attention for the people with fewer opportunities and the ones that needs such dialogues most. The ESG will smooth the relation between the two realities, taking into account also contributions coming from relevant stakeholders, such as youth organisations and associations.

L'articolo Youth Dialogue: European Guidelines on the governance proviene da Youth Networks.

As we were checking the proper functioning of the website, in fact, we noticed that something was not working. Especially for the webform ESC21 (Job and Traineeship), we realized that serious technical problems make the uploading of the activities under the section “Project Activities” extremely difficult. As shown in the pic, in red, there’s no way to fill the box.

Fortunately, a video tutorial shot by the British National Agency could help us seeing how the section should have been completed – speaking of this: why can’t National Agencies offer common tools and guidelines to help youth organisations understand in every part the new ESC programme?

The point is that this is the most important section of the form, since it generates the project flows and the budget that can therefore be requested – as it happens for example on the Complementary Activities, shown in the screenshot here below.

Because of this bug, then, it’s not possible to submit the project.

Here a video that better explains what happen.

Moreover, because of this problem, the system won’t let us insert the partner organisations in the section “Project Management”.

Together with other organisations, we tried to contact EACEA, as well as our country’s National Agency, but the answers couldn’t help us solve the problem – we were just told by the first to inquire at the other, and vice versa. How it will be possible to submit the project, is still unknow. Will EACEA postpone the deadline – as it happened just a few days ago, when the webform for submitting KA1 projects wasn’t working?

L'articolo ESC: bug on the website, no way to submit projects proviene da Youth Networks.

Taking as example the Italian National Agency, what we could see is that there was an overall increase of budget in every field of the programme. The total budget allocated for Italy amounts to EUR 12.767.615, out of a total of EUR 3.019.506.507 (as per the Erasmus+ annual work programme 2019).

What is most interesting though is the breakdown of the fund by field. A part from the overall increase, in fact, we could observe an increase especially for the training courses. Whereas in 2018 the funds allocated accounted for EUR 1.602.711, in 2019 they will reach EUR 2.204.784 – an increase of over 37%.

Soon afterwards, the most relevant increase is the one relating to KA1 projects. In 2018, they were funded by EUR 5.634.305; in 2019, the sum amounts to 7.349.278 – over 30% more.

For youth exchanges, there was an increase of nearly 28%, passing from EUR 4.031.594 in 2018 to EUR 5.144.495 in 2019. Regarding all the rest of activities, the general increase stays slightly over 22%.

On average, we could estimate an increase of nearly 28% (27,85%, to be more accurate) from 2018 to 2019.

Whether this growth applies also all the other countries at the same rates, is of course up to the National Agencies – without prejudices to the limits set by the European Commission.

The criteria for setting out the available amount by country follows the guidelines as stated in the annual work programme (see p. 122), that are:

• a) Country Population (Eurostat latest update: 09/04/2018);
• b) Cost of Living (Eurostat latest update EU 28: 19/12/2017; latest update EU-3 (EFTA): 19/02/2018);
• c) Distance between capitals (Ephemeride latest available data; date of extraction 03/04/2014);
• d) Performance

L'articolo E+, relevant increase for training courses per country proviene da Youth Networks.