EVOLVET (European VOLunteer coordinators Vocation Education and Training) Erasmus Project

Project Title

EVOLVET (European VOLunteer coordinators Vocation Education and Training)

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

EVOLVET (European VOLunteer coordinators Vocation Education and Training) was a European strategic partnership composed by seven organisations working with development projects for social inclusion and education from Austria, Finland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain. The project aimed at giving a positive impulsion to the training of volunteer coordinators by providing a standardised tool-kit containing on-the-job training materials for skills and competences commonly demanded to volunteer coordinators across Europe, not only for the management of development projects but also on the concrete education and training of the volunteers taking part on them.
During the two-year project duration, partner organisations worked on exchanging information and materials about their current on-the-job training practices for their professional volunteer coordinators as well as carried out on-the-field research of the skills and competences commonly demanded to volunteer coordinators across Europe. Partners used the collected information and materials to create a standardised tool-kit containing on-the-job training materials for skills and competences commonly demanded to volunteer coordinators in development organisations across Europe, that was tested on the different partner countries in order to ensure its quality and improve it using real volunteer coordinators working on development organisations. Moreover, the project also run transnational training mobilities that made possible to volunteer coordinators from the different partner organisations to take part in common education initiatives about volunteer management embedded within the activities of the project. The creation of such standard pan-European training materials for professional volunteer coordinators will directly contribute to improve the transparency and recognition of their qualifications and competences using also already established systems based on measurable recognitions at transnational level, including those acquired through formal, non-formal and informal learning. Furthermore, the project succeeded to identify the skills required by professional volunteer coordinators on development organisations, what made possible to compose an standard curriculum of competences for this professional category that could be use afterwards for both, vocational education and training centres (to develop new learning pathways, methodologies and degrees) and organisations working with projects for local and international development (to detect which competences should be reinforced on their teams and detect those skills needed for future recruitments).
According to all of this, EVOLVET was not only an innovative project which main objective was to develop new materials and improve the situation of those professionals working as volunteer coordinators on the development field, but also a necessary initiative to facilitate the transitions of those learning on social education and training centres offering NGOs coordination and management degrees, and the real labour market that will wait them after their graduation. Besides all of this, the project also allowed to create new links between organisations of different countries and sectors working on the same field (local and international development of communities) that made possible to reinforce the transnational structures of communication and sources to support projects on this field.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 177120 Eur

Project Coordinator

CONGDCAR & Country: ES

Project Partners

• Pista Mágica – Associação
• ASSOCIAZIONE INTERNAZIONALE VOLONTARI LAICI
• Art in Tanzania Ry
• Fund for Intercultural Education
• Platforma dobrovolnickych centier a organizacii
• SUDWIND VEREIN FUR ENTWICKLUNGSPOLITIK UND GLOBALE GERECHTIGKEIT