Strategic Partnership for Access to Volunteering Erasmus Project

Project Title

Strategic Partnership for Access to Volunteering

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: Disabilities – special needs; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

The Strategic Partnership for Access to Volunteering is a cross-European research and development project with the core aim of increasing the inclusion of young people with disabilities in volunteering projects.
The project is based on feedback and research from previous volunteering projects which identified access for youth with disabilities to volunteering projects as limited and often completely disabling. Young people with disabilities are known to face multiple barriers to being able to actively participate in volunteering projects. Barriers include such things as physical access, lack of accessible resources, no access to additional support from the application stage to project completion, lack of knowledge and understanding of different disabilities, and lack of consideration for inclusion at the planning and project design stage.
This project aims to address this through developing a simple toolkit to enable organisations to design and implement more inclusive projects. The active engagement of young people with disabilities ensures their perspectives and experiences help shape the final product and that the project itself is fully inclusive.
Delivered through a partnership of 4 organisations based in the UK, Romania, Italy and North Macedonia, and led by International Service, a UK international development organisation, the project brings together an extensive base of disability, youth, volunteering and educational expertise and experience. The core partners are International Service (UK) CYA Krik ( North Macedonia), Ferfilo ( Italy) and Offensiva Tirenilo ( Romania).
The key components of the project are:
– an initial phase of research
– the development of a toolkit for training
– testing and finalising this toolkit with youth workers, youth with disabilities and partner staff
– delivery of initial training using the toolkit
-production and sharing of an on line toolkit for training which supports the development of youth work practice around inclusive volunteering.
The research investigates the barriers and challenges faced by young people living with disabilities which hinder their active participation in youth volunteering projects. The project partners will engage 75 organisations in each of the four countries which work with people living with disabilities to collect information from their members or beneficiaries. At least 200 people per country will be contacted to ensure the basis of the research is robust. Through collation and analysis of this information and feedback, a research report will be created. The research report will inform the creation of a training toolkit which will be able to be used by any organisation which carries out youth volunteering projects, to help them become more inclusive.
The toolkit will be tested with a group of mainstream youth workers and young people with disabilities, and then refined before being shared more widely.
The overall intended impact of this project is increased knowledge and understanding of the challenges facing young people living with disabilities and their access to volunteering, as well as increased inclusion of these young people in cross-European volunteering projects through the use of the training toolkit and applying this learning and guidance in project planning and practice.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 122074 Eur

Project Coordinator

United Nations Association International Service & Country: UK

Project Partners

• BANGHERANG ASSOCIAZIONE DI PROMOZIONE SOCIALE
• BANGHERANG ASSOCIAZIONE DI PROMOZIONE SOCIALE
• OFENSIVA TINERILOR ASOCIATIA
• CENTAR ZA MLADINSKI AKTIVIZAM CMA KRIK