New two-years project within the Erasmus+ Programme starts today – XCHANGE 2.0 Exchange of youth leaders in International Voluntary Service

15/12/2018

The project “XCHANGE 2.0 – exchange of international youth leaders in International Voluntary Service” involves 13 partners from 8 countries and one European network where all are members – Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations. The coordinating organisation is Young Researchers of Serbia. Workcamps are their common denominator.

Workcamp movement is almost 100 years old. It has always been avant-garde and innovative, so to exist this long. It used to involve women at the same level as men in times when most European countries didn’t allow women the right to vote. It declined to have any military or religious activities in workcamps, when it used to be the default. It has stood for solidarity in many times of crisis, precisely because of the dynamic nature of international youth volunteerism.

Projects like XCHANGE help explore new innovative ways for the movement to address the needs of young people and youth organisations. XCHANGE is about the exchange of youth leaders, as a response to a common challenge of decrease in number of youth leaders in the movement.

In the period between 15/12/2018 and 15/06/2020 the consortium plans to provide a theoretical (training) and hands on experience (practice phase) to 20 youth leaders from Serbia and 20 from partners’ countries. The leaders will coordinate 40 local community projects (workcamps) involving 500+ young volunteers from all over the world.

OBJ 1: raise the level of key competences and skills of 40 youth leaders (20 from Serbia and 20 from partner countries) for the task of coordinating international volunteer projects (workcamps) abroad
OBJ 2: Foster an international/intercultural supportive environment and mentorship system for practicing youth leadership abroad, deeply linked to local communities’ realities in countries other than one’s own
OBJ 3: raise awareness of the the practice and benefits of international mobility of youth workers for better social cohesion, intercultural understanding and more inclusive practices on local level
OBJ 4: support and facilitate strong and clear partnership and agreements among 14 organisations involved

Activities:
• Kick-off meeting/ international dissemination event, October 2018, Spain
• promotion campaign, recruitment of leaders, December-February 2019
• two international trainings of youth leaders in IVS, April and May 2019, Serbia
• practice phase: youth work abroad, 40 youth leaders exchanged between Serbia and other partners during summer 2019
• Support system for youth leaders by HOs during their practice phase, in all countries
• promotional campaign -dissemination of results from the practice phase: upgrade of the web documentary www.youthleaders.online with a blog, translation, new stories from leaders, September-October 2019, online among partners
• evaluation with leaders and SOs and certification September-October 2019, nationally
• Evaluation meeting/international dissemination event, October 2019, Belgium