Digital youth work and digital inclusion are fast moving from an “emerging topic” reserved for the most innovative organisations to something that is required more than ever in order to support young people at all times, even when physical contact is not possible. Young people are facing with unemployment, underemployment, mental health challenges and even worse, many of them are for the second time in just a few years going through a major crisis, which will have profound economic, social and political consequences in the years to come. As such, youth organisations need to increase their capacity and develop innovative strategies to reposition themselves and respond to the emerging needs much faster than before. There is a huge potential, there is and is going to be an increasing need, but there are very little tools available and there is a very limited capacity at the moment in the youth sector, which is hit in many countries by severe under funding, migration of workers to other better-paid sectors and other challenges. We want to bring our contribution in changing that, put digital youth work back in focus and provide the tools needed to start implementing digital youth work with minimal effort. AIM: Increase the capacity of youth organizations from Romania, France, Bulgaria, Belgium and the federated networks of the partnership consortium to serve young people (including vulnerable youth) extensively and intensively through digital youth work and digital inclusion and safety practices. OBJECTIVES:1. Develop a collaborative learning space focused on digital inclusion and digital youth work between 5 EU-based youth organizations through the sharing of best practices and national approaches in a 25-month timeframe.2. Increase the capacity of at least 100 youth workers from minimum 4 EU countries to engage in digital inclusion and digital youth work activities in a 25-month timeframe.3. Increase the capacity of at least 25 youth organizations from minimum 4 EU countries to improve or adopt digital inclusion practices for reaching out to young people with fewer opportunities from their communities in a 25-month timeframe.4. Raise awareness among minimum 100 youth workers from 4 EU countries around the opportunities, challenges and solutions surrounding digital safety and privacy (including humane technologies and algorithms) in a 25-month timeframe.TARGET-GROUPS:- Youth workers from participating countries and other EU and partner countries interested in engaging in digital youth work activities and/or willing to learn more about this topic;- Youth workers who are working or willing to work with vulnerable young people and wish to engage them with digital tools or through digital youth work generally;- Youth organizations and their management teams from participating countries and other EU and partner countries who are planning to develop or create their digital youth work capacity/strategy;- Secondary target-group: Teachers who are interested in organising digital activities with their students and can get strong inspiration from digital youth work and digital inclusion practices;KEY RESULTS (selection): - 100 youth workers from at least 4 EU countries have a better understanding of digital youth work and digital inclusion and are more capable, motivated and competent of using it in their practice under conditions of safety and quality;- Minimum 250 young people from minimum 4 EU countries and minimum 250 youth workers have contributed to the “Shaping Digital Inclusion and Safety in the Post-Pandemic World” research;- Minimum 250 relevant learners have subscribed to the MOOC course on digital inclusion and safety and are better prepared to implement digital youth work activities in their own organisations;- 100+ youth workers are more aware and more capable of supporting their young people with elements related to deepfakes, fake news, (in)humane algorithms, digital privacy and safety;- 25+ youth organizations from minimum 4 EU countries are now better equipped to implement digital inclusion and digital youth work methodologies or strategies;- 30 youth workers from 4 EU countries benefit from a comprehensive digital youth work and digital inclusion training course hosted in Bulgaria, developing both their topic-related skills in an intercultural context, as well as having the opportunity to attend co-creation innovation labs to improve the Intellectual Outputs of the project; - 5 gamification tools are created and freely available for youth organizations to interactively enage and use them to develop their digital inclusion strategies;- 1 research paper/brief related to how young people and youth workers perceive digital youth work and digital inclusion in a post-pandemic context is published and freely available to youth organizations;

#Evolve aims to enable exchange, develop new cooperation between CCIVS members and external stakeholders through an International Conference and by starting the Long Term Training programme for the IVS network by providing two trainings the ‘ABC of NGO Finances’ and ‘Communication and Marketing’ , following these we will ensure the replication of the project in Local Training Hubs based in the local communities where the 26 partners are based. It will produce 2 Open Source Toolkits on the theme of the Trainings. #Evolve is built upon the CBY KA2 - STEPS project which made an analysis of the training needs of IVS organisations, the ‘State of the Art of IVS’ was the publication issue from this project, it highlights the following; 1. organisational development is a top priority for IVS organisations, 2. The need to address the decreasing numbers of volunteers. As such #Evolve will promote networking (encouraging exchange – developing partnerships, sharing of ideas; meeting with stakeholders) and capacity building in Finances and Communication and Marketing in order to meet the needs highlighted. In face of declining numbers of volunteers #Evolve offers a space to build new partnerships, to further develop local actions and to develop key competencies to strengthen organisational structure. The Conference offers- visibility/networking/learning, the Training – new skills peer-to peer support with the trainings taking place in strategic countries with more expert members, the Local Training Hubs – multiplication with local communities improving access for 1500 young people with low basic skills and thus promoting social inclusion. The Results will include Open Source Toolkits on the themes of the Trainings and Reports.

This project is developed based on the direction of the White Paper for International Voluntary Service (IVS) 2011-2021 regarding Capacity Building and Impact, and in the decision of the General Assembly 2014 to establish a Monitoring and Empowerment System for the CCIVS. Following the 2017-2018 project STEPS to Change (www.ccivs.org/steps), the present project STEPS to the Future brought Organisational Development (OD) training and impact measurement to 20 organisations in 4 regions, allowing the building of a global and regional diagnosis on the State of the Art of the International Voluntary Service movement. Through STEPS, CCIVS aimed at expanding and consolidating the empowerment process in four regions. With the support of Erasmus+, 22 partners (including 3 international and regional networks Service Civil International, Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisation and Network for Voluntary Development in Asia) from Asia, Africa, Europe and America came together to cooperate in this project, which not only strengthened their own capacity through a series of offline and online trainings and job-shadowing in peer organisation but also benefited from their experience and contribution to the refinement of tools on Organisational Development for IVS organisations. The main objectives were to:-increase the competencies of youth professionals / youth organisations;-improve the cooperation for strategic objectives among the IVS networks;-generate high-quality tools, methods and mechanisms that support such empowerment and monitoring within the network/movement.In order to reach the objectives, the project incorporated the following four phases:1.Launching the Process:-Steering Team Meeting & Experts Seminar in Estonia hosted by EstYes, January 2019.2.Setting the Capacities:-Training for Trainers on Organisational Development in Italy hosted by YAP Italy, May 2019.3.Implement Global Empowerment-On-Field Training Exchanges & Job-shadowing in Europe, May 2019;-Diagnosis & Training on Organisational Development in Africa hosted by VWAN Nigeria and in Asia hosted by VSA Thailand;-MOOC Production Laboratory in Hungary hosted by Egysek, October 2019;-Online Course on Organisational Development for IVS Organisations (STEPS MOOC) launched, January 2020;-Webinar Series, September – November 2020.4.Consolidate and Scale-Monitoring mechanism;-Support measure on organisational sustainability;-Dissemination and future strategies meetings.The project approach and methodologies are innovative and it was a significant step in terms of the evolution and sustainable development of both CCIVS and the International Voluntary Service movement. It was CCIVS’s first time to organise a Training for Trainers on Organisational Development and develop a MOOC on Organisational Development that could reach a much larger target group. The project also mainstreamed “interculturality” throughout its process and incorporated it in the organisational development and monitoring methodology. It’s important to highlight that the consortium reacted promptly and adequately to the COVID-19 pandemic which imposed travel restriction and lockdown policies and brought a great impact on the management and organisation of youth mobility and capacity building work of many organisations and networks in the International Voluntary Service. CCIVS and its partners have actively engaged themselves to make full use of the project tools and outcomes and look for means to diffuse these products that would be beneficial to more individuals and organisations who want to increase their capacities.The project chronicle magazine gives a more detailed overview and highlights of outcomes, & available on http://bit.ly/STEPS2-chronicle.

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

“Peers to Peace: Peer learning and Peer support for Capacity Building in international volunteer work” was a worldwide project that involved 25 different partners in 24 countries from Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe. The key focus of the project was the peer approach. Through peer-learning and peer-supporting in the following areas of expertise: knowledge management, volunteer management, project management and fundraising the capacity of project partners was improved. This applied on small scale in the single events and on a large scale with upgrading the online tool for peer-support. This tool facilitates an easier access to resources and (exchange of) information and further stimulates possibilities for innovation and capacity building of project partners and International Voluntary Service movement as a whole. The project spanned over 21 months and included 3 main mobility events: a Peer university on volunteer and knowledge management in May 2017 in Poland, a Learning seminar on knowledge management and fundraising in July 2017 in Malaysia, and Training on project management in March 2018 in Greece. Besides these mobility activities, 3 capacity building events were organized as part of the project: 1) a steering team meeting in January 2017 in Germany, 2) a crucial Technical Meeting in November 2017 in the UK, as well as 3) an Evaluation meeting combined with a final event in June 2018 in Belgium. Moreover, exchange of EVS volunteers took place between Europe and Asia (3 volunteers from Asia hosted in Belgium and Greece; and 1 European volunteer hosted in Malaysia), promoting transnational non-formal learning mobility and supporting an exchange of experiences between Program and Partner Countries. The main target group of the project were youth leaders, youth workers, volunteers and activists, for a total of more than 100 people directly involved, who acted as multipliers within their sending organizations and contributed to the setting up and implementation of the peer learning system thanks to their experience. Participants came from a great variety of countries and this increased the intercultural dimension of the project and its impact, guaranteeing a real exchange and strengthening the networking capacities of the organizations. Projects results were shared among partners and within the networks they belong to. These included: 1) SCI-Moving Forward - a handbook for volunteers and staff members in SCI and partner organizations focusing on increasing the understanding of how SCI works internationally intended to support greater participation and knowledge transfer among International Volunteering Service organizations, including important chapters on finances, knowledge management and volunteering within SCI; and 2) innovative online peer- learning platform that has been newly integrated in SCI’s Members Area allowing for direct exchange of knowledge and experience among SCI members. The participation of other major IVSO networks, such as Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service (CCIVS), Network for Voluntary Development in Asia (NVDA), and Voluntary Workcamps Association in Nigeria (VWAN, central NGO in Africa) enriched the project with diverse inputs on volunteering and youth work in their context.