Volunteering Meets Media: MediAfrica Erasmus Project

Project Title

Volunteering Meets Media: MediAfrica

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 : Capacity Building for youth in ACP countries, Latin America and Asia

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

Solidarités Jeunesses would like to propose a project on how voluntary projects impact the perception and representations one’s have and thus on stereotypes that arise from it.Volunteering projects offer the opportunity to discover new cultures and habits through local organisations, consequently by living the daily life of the people, participating to a project serving the local communities and meeting different organisations answering local needs (environment, construction, social, etc).At the same time, volunteering offers learning opportunities while contributing to meaningful actions during the protection of cultural diversity and the improvement of living conditions.However to experience those projects led on the field by us, voluntary organisations, in many countries in the world, and to allow a change in the volunteers’ perceptions of those countries, there is a need for an upstream work in terms of communication in order to increase the number of volunteers going to participate to voluntary project and consequently, supporting the implementation of projects. A great number of the young people are attracted by IVS and eager to contribute to this kind of actions. Despite this, the IVS movement are recording a dramatic decrease in the number of volunteers exchanged especially towards African countries.→ What are the causes of this phenomenon?→ Does the multiplications of other types of volunteering affect us?The will with this project is to identify key elements of our projects in order to communicate better on them for a higher recognition.For this project, we’ve decided to focus on the projects implemented by our partner organisations in Africa.Indeed too many times, we’ve noticed that the first words that come to the mind of people when thinking of Africa are: hunger, wars, poverty and refugees. The volunteers still come up with the idea that Africa needs “help”. Through the use of several methods and tools, this project aims at changing this perception and to support our partner organisations in the implementation of their projects.The objectives of the project is to:-To improve the perception of Africa and to develop a critical thinking dealing with mass media, in order to better communicate on IVS projects-To deconstruct stereotypesThose two objectives will lead us to our main one which is:-To increase the number of volunteers exchanged

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 149565,32 Eur

Project Coordinator

SOLIDARITES JEUNESSES MCP & Country: FR

Project Partners

• KENYA VOLUNTARY DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION
• THE COORDINATING COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTARY SERVICE
• COORDINADORA D’ORGANITZADORS DE CAMPS DE TREBALL INTERNACIONALS DE CATALUNYA
• UGANDA VOLUNTARY DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION
• ASSOCIATION TOGOLAISE DES VOLONTAIRES AU TRAVAIL AS.TO.VO.T
• XCHANGE SCOTLAND
• ALLIANCE OF EUROPEAN VOLUNTARY SERVICE ORGANISATIONS ASSOCIATION