Board Boost Erasmus Project

Project Title

Board Boost

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 2020

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Context
NSU has together with its member organisations and partners (26 organisations involved) in 2019 carried out a questionnaire and two seminars to define what challenges we as Northern European youth NGO are facing. One of the central issues was board work. The origin of the problem is in most cases that too much work is on too few persons, which leads that there is not enough human resources to develop the processes, search for new tools, build and recognise skills, take care of the board members wellbeing and motivate new persons to join the board. These are the challenges we aim to address in Board Boost.

Aim
The aim of Board Boost is to increase European youth NGOs´ capacity to develop their board work.

Objectives
The objectives are to:
1. to analyse the core needs of board work and collect best practices examples,
2. develop a digital course that support development of board work, as well as wellbeing and personal growth for board members, and
3. disseminate the digital course both among current central persons in European youth work, and among potential new board members.

Target group
The target group is current and potential board members in northern European youth NGOs, as well as the organisations´ other central persons who work closely with the boards. We expect approximately 150 persons to be directly involved in the project.

Beneficiaries
The project strengthens youth NGO by supporting their board work. Thereby the end beneficiaries are young people in the NGOs and the societies where the organisations are active.

Partnership
The Board Boost partners are 5 youth organisations from Denmark, Finland, Germany, Latvia and Sweden, and additionally we cooperate with associated partners in the same countries and other Nordic and Baltic countries.

Structure
Board Boost runs for 15 months (mid June 2020 – mid September 2021) and include
– Production of the Intellectual Output, a digital course, which is done locally by the partners and coordinated online June 2020 – March 2021.
– 2 Multiplying Events held in April 2021 in Finland and July 2021 in Denmark.
– Facilitated test round of the digital course held in May-June 2021 online
– 3 Transnational Project Meetings for project coordination and progress follow-up, held in in June 2020 in Sweden, in December 2020 in Latvia and in September 2021 in Germany.

Result
The digital course is the projects’ main outcome, and it will consist of material (video/text input, assignments) supporting youth NGOs to develop their board work. The course will consist of:
– Overview of current board work situation
– Templates that support the structure of board work
– Competence development support
– Introduction to skills recognition tools
– Tools for taking care of board members mental health
– Ideas for how to recruit new board members
The digital course material will be available online for individual use at any time, and we will run it in facilitated version during the project and afterwards. This means that a group of participants study the digital course simultaneously during a 2-month period and discuss/reflect on the material at 3 facilitated online meetings.

Impact
The expected impact is that the five partners, the close network of 26 organisations and many more youth NGOs around Europe increase capacity to develop their board work. Better board work strengthens the organisations, offers more to the young people and enhance the organisations´ interaction in the society.

Dissemination
We will disseminate Board Boost for wider use of the digital course in the partnership, at associated partners and at Nordic and European umbrella organisations.

Follow-up
After Board Boost we will during a 2-years period follow up the development of Board Work at the participating and associated NGOs. During this time we will continue running facilitated rounds of the digital course and possibly hold follow-up projects supporting development of youth NGOs in some other way.

Project Website

https://www.nordung.org/dynamo

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 53359 Eur

Project Coordinator

NORDISK SAMORGANISATION FOR UNGDOMSARBETE RF & Country: FI

Project Partners

• Sydslesvigs danske Ungdomsforeninger e.V.
• Latvijas Jauno zemnieku klubs
• RFSU LOKALAVDELNING MALMÖ/LUND
• 4H Danmark