Regenerate & Innovate: Social Impact Volunteering for youth Erasmus Project

Project Title

Regenerate & Innovate: Social Impact Volunteering for youth

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; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

The Regenerate and Innovate: Social Impact Volunteering for Youth (RISIV) project is a new transnational partnership that aims to provide an innovative model of social inclusion through youth participation in community service through local and structured social impact projects (SIPs). The RISIV partnership comprises 6 youth-focused organisations as partners from 6 European countries, working together over a 24-month period. Led by Eurocircle in France, with partners from Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, the UK and Italy. The objective of RISIV is to design, test, validate and produce new guidance and support material for youth workers, youth leaders and young people aged 13-17 to co-produce, implement and evaluate locality-based volunteering projects for social impact.

Whilst RISIV builds on the values of volunteering and community service, its specific concept goes beyond these approaches by creating ‘task teams’ of youth leaders and volunteers to design, engage in and implement ‘social impact projects’ (SIPs) alongside local communities in need. SIPs are designed, tested and validated through effective youth work practices to create structured learning outcomes, offering learning and development both for those who participate in them and the communities that they aim to support. In the RISIV approach, young people between the ages of 13-17, operating in non-formal youth work contexts are facilitated to come together to address a local problem to achieve positive change for social impact. Good social impact projects offer the participants structured and identifiable learning outcomes that have lasting benefit (for empowerment, entry to VET and labour markets and broader social inclusion and citizenship) – and involve community members and stakeholders in their implementation; educate and motivate others to take action too; and focus on solutions to address the root causes of a social issue.

European policies, local communities, NGOs and youth groups based in those communities share a common goal of the importance of finding new ways to build resilience and foster community cohesion and active citizenship. Locality and neighbourhood are the places where young people are brought up, are living their lives and are making their way in the world. For those young people living in disadvantaged localities, the negative impact of the financial crisis was two-fold; firstly, their communities were those that most widely bore the brunt of the increases in further deprivation and inequality; and second, as they were approaching and entering the age where they would begin their working lives they became the ‘NEET’ generation left behind by the increase in unemployment. The years towards 2020 saw those affected communities in Europe begin to benefit as the effects of the recovery slowly tricked down – only now to see those benefits set back by the effects of the globally crisis brought on by Covid-19. Nonetheless there have been many instances of resilience and change as communities have come together to support one another across Europe to tackle this emergency and RISIV aims to capitalise on this spirit.

Therefore RISIV is designed and tested with the active involvement of 150 young people and 30 youth workers and trainers as direct participants, whilst reaching many more through its dissemination, impact and legacy activities. Its results include a set of Intellectual Outputs, specifically (1) a pedagogical roadmap study of good practices and development of methodologies in youth team volunteering for social impact; (2) a new curriculum for youth workers on co-production and mobilisation concepts and techniques for young people working in local communities with different actors; (3) guidelines for young people, particularly youth leaders on peer development and the project lifecycle (4) a digitised toolkit of open and flexible planning resources and (5) a stakeholder guide for setting up and implementing the RISIV approach in localities with young people. Each of these Intellectual Outputs provides a legacy of learning for wider use in European youth work, drawn directly from the expertise and experience of the participating youth workers, facilitators and young people. Specifically, they meet a need to change and improve the situation in each one of the partner’s local/neighbourhood in relation to practices, resources and networks to sustain social impact projects. To reach a wider audience, the RISIV project foresees an individual multiplier event in each partner country to culminate a programme of dissemination in which the young people will be active participants, promoting the project and its outcomes to their peers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 215996 Eur

Project Coordinator

EUROCIRCLE ASSOCIATION & Country: FR

Project Partners

• C.I.O.F.S. FORMAZIONE PROFESSIONALE
• DYPALL NETWORK: ASSOCIACAO PARA O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA PARTICIPACAO CIDADA
• HFC HOPE FOR CHILDREN CRC POLICY CENTER
• RINOVA LIMITED
• Neo Sapiens S.L.U.