Executive renewal Erasmus Project

Project Title

Executive renewal

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

Outdoor play is of vital importance for the healthy development of children. Play benefits their social, emotional, cognitive and physical development. Play allows children to use their creativity, take initiative, practice their social skills etc. As a result, they grow up to be healthy and balanced adults. Playgrounds play an important role in stimulating outdoor play, with playground work being a form of youth work. Volunteers are of vital importance to playgrounds in both the Netherlands and Flanders/Brussel. Not only are the playgrounds managed by volunteers, the people offering and monitoring children’s play activities also do so voluntarily. Current playground boards notice that the motivation and the engagement of young volunteers have changed and nowadays they have difficulty recruiting new volunteers and binding them to the cause. Something has to be done to turn this around. It is time that boards of playgrounds reflect on their current policy to see if their approach suits the wishes and requirements of young volunteers today.

This project stimulates reviving and, if necessary, rejuvenation of playground management in the Netherlands and Flanders/Brussel. It results in a toolkit for the boards to analyze their current approach. People trained in the use of the developed toolkit will assist the boards of playgrounds during this self-reflection process.

We will train six local professionals in Flanders/Brussel. They are going to use the developed toolkit to guide ten playgrounds in Flanders/Brussel during the self-reflection process. In the Netherlands we will train five local professionals who will be coaching ten playgrounds.

How are we going to achieve this? First we’ll identify and specify the needs for support of voluntary playground boards in both countries by interviewing a number of board members. In Flanders/Brussel the VDS will also question young voluntary participants in VDS courses on what motivates them to volunteer and what they expect from their volunteer work. In the Netherlands Jantje Beton will question youth participants of the Social Service project “Wanted: Play Ambassadors”.

We will develop a toolkit, based on these insights. It will consist of a manual with working methods and questionnaires, which provides playground boards with insights into what actions they can take to find solutions to their challenges. In addition to the toolkit, we’ll develop a training for local professionals on how to use and apply the toolkit during the self-reflection process of playground boards. These newly trained coaches will then support ten boards in Flanders/Brussel and ten in the Netherlands. We’ll use these experiences as important input to finetune and improve the developed tools. During the entire project we collect examples of best practices in both countries to include in the toolkit, the training and the training manual.

During two-day meetings every three months in Mechelen or Utrecht, the VDS and Jantje Beton exchange knowledge and experience. Through training and sharing on specific themes, we both improve our knowledge in each other’s area of expertise. During these meetings we also develop content such as the interviews, the toolkit and the training for coaches. We’ll share information and results about these themes and acquired insights with a broader audience, for example during the congress “Playground Work is Youth Work” in Flanders and the event “Young People Active in Playgrounds” in the Netherlands.

The final result of the project is a number of concrete tools, examples of best practices and twenty boards of playgrounds that went through a self-reflection process. The desired impact is that these boards are able to implement the necessary changes they identified in this process to their management and approach. This way, their playgrounds can again be what they are meant to be: a safe place for lots of play (and) fun for children.

In the long run, not only the management of playgrounds in the Netherlands and Flanders will benefit from the results of this project; also boards from other voluntary and welfare organizations will benefit, even across national borders in other European countries!

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 64680 Eur

Project Coordinator

Vlaamse Dienst Speelpleinwerk vzw & Country: BE

Project Partners

• Stichting Nationaal Jeugd Fonds Jantje Beton