Création d’un référentiel européen d’indicateurs qualitatifs pertinents et harmonisés pour une évaluation lisible, utile et reconnue des compétences acquises formellement, informellement ou non-formellement par les bénévoles en activité radiophonique Erasmus Project

Project Title

Création d’un référentiel européen d’indicateurs qualitatifs pertinents et harmonisés pour une évaluation lisible, utile et reconnue des compétences acquises formellement, informellement ou non-formellement par les bénévoles en activité radiophonique

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Recognition (non-formal and informal learning/credits); Recognition, transparency, certification

Project Summary

There are tens of thousands of volunteers in community radios in Europe. If radios have develop their professionalization, these volunteers will continue their work as managers, administrators, journalists, show hosts, content producers and sound engineers. They are diverse in age, socio-economic status, level of initial education, life experience, the motivation that leads them to this activity as either a leisure hobby or as a vector of professional, social, and personal recognition or integration into their community. They are learners, either in non-formal or informal learning situations. They acquire transversal skills and knowledge and through their radio practices and also on the various subjects they present or work on. These skills are not sufficiently recognized and validated, so that when they leave the radio, it is as if these skills were not taken seriously enough to be taken into account when applying for a job or for community service work in the world of media, communication, and information or other jobs or fields, whether near their community or far in other parts of Europe. Community radios in Europe have produced in 2014 a European Job Skills Portfolio for these volunteers. Volunteers were able to indicate their acquired skills, but it should be certified and signed off by station managers to reinforce the credibility. But therein lies the question: what proves that the evaluation carried out or signed off by a station manager is actually reliable, valid, and therefore useful to the user of the Job Skills Portfolio. If community radios are characterized by their statutes and their attachment to values (respect for human rights, diversity, access to freedom of speech in the media, particularly for minorities that often do not have such access), they are also quite diverse : in urban areas, suburbs, rural regions, dedicated more to entertainment or to cultural themes, targeting younger or older populations, an audience of general public or a specific community, with various musical programming styles, with a listenership of millions or only hundreds, using obsolete or modern equipment, with an ‘organic’ organization structure or a highly-structured management, with teams of young people or mostly older, or intergenerational, supported and subsidized by their community and country or not at all, in diverse countries throughout Europe… The evaluation of professional skills that is carried out in such different contexts risks being totally subjective, and incomprehensible in other contexts or places. The objective of this project was to determine subjectivity in the act of evaluation, and to identify in the different contexts what can lead one to say that a radio is of high-quality, and that the work achieved by a volunteer at a particular radio is of high quality. The goal was to write the necessary complementary document for the community radio job skills portfolio, and a “European guide for relevant and harmonized qualitative indicators for an easily-understandable, useful and recognized evaluation of community radio volunteers skills acquired in formal, informal and non-formal learning situations” is now written. The ten partners (including professional organizations, training organizations, radios in diverse geographical, cultural and social contexts) have mobilize more than 150 people and 45 organisations: station managers, trainers, and volunteers from the community radios and organizations involved, and also station managers and volunteers from other radios to make up a representative panel during visits, auditions, training classes, meetings and seminars. We have established a methodology protocol and report worksheets for all the surveys carried out by each partner in the different countries, and during learner mobilities when they collect information during total immersion, training classes (classes on radio and special-needs volunteers, radio and rurality, radio and social inclusion for troubled youth in urban areas) and at a seminar. At transnational meetings we worked on specific contexts: community radio show hosting in urban zones with a multi-ethnic population, cultural themed radios, student radios, educational radios, political activist radios, entertainment radios, and others that target a particular population or theme. Then a French and English new version of the « European Community Radio Job Skills” and “a European reference guide on the values, criteria, qualitative indicators” are now written. The expected impact is for volunteers acquired job skills to be indubitably validated and recognized, in order to improve their access to jobs, employability, social inclusion and integration, and to enhance their chances of mobility across Europe. National and international organizations (for example Amarc-Europe) will be able to contribute to the dissemination. The idea, the methodology applied, the final document could interest other sectors that work with volunteers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 177855,55 Eur

Project Coordinator

Syndicat National des Radios Libres & Country: FR

Project Partners

• ARCI COMITATO TERRITORIALE DI FIRENZE
• TALLER DE COMUNICACION RADIO ENLACE
• FSE Fréquence-Sillé
• Dublin South Broadcasting Cooperative
• COMMIT – Community Medien Institut für Weiterbildung, Forschung und Beratung
• Radio Eskilstuna
• Bradford Community Broadcasting Ltd