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I'VE – I Have Experienced. Recognition and Validation of volunteering through peer support and open source tools
Start date: Nov 1, 2014, End date: Oct 31, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The partnership will bring together Youth Volunteering Organizations from 12 Countries (Italy, Belgium, Spain, Finland, France, Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine, Russian Federation, Serbia, Korea and Mexico) 2 Research Institutes and 2 Volunteering Networks (the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organizations and the Italian Volunteering Centres Network). The YNGOs are active in the promotion of International Voluntary Service programmes, and involve in volunteering projects more than 6000 youngsters every year. These programmes include workcamps of 2-3 weeks and medium and long term projects of 2-12 months and impacts on hosting local communities and on volunteers who experience informal learning in intercultural and collective contexts. The network of the concerned organizations has 85 members and partners, able to involve almost 20.000 young volunteers in Europe and worldwide. The active local communities in Europe, mainly isolated or disadvantaged, are around 1600. The YNGOs and their volunteers needs to improve the capacity of recognition of these experiences, so to answer to different expectations and purposes. Youth organizations aim at bridging the educational effect of volunteering with formal educations systems and work sector, and to enhance the accountability of this specific informal learning setting. Volunteers are still not able to show what they have learned in terms of soft skills and meta-competencies and cannot fully exploit the voluntary service experience to improve their educational paths and employability. The partnership will carry out a cooperative pattern to fulfill these expectations and purposes so to reach systemic objectives: improve youth conditions, enhance youth employability, support lifelong learning strategy and strengthen the social cohesion in Europe. To reach these goals the partnership will work on the production of intellectual outputs, that will lead to better edit the set of tools of the innovative recognition system. This will be supported by activities implemented to ensure an evidence based approach, thanks to the piloting of methodologies and products with volunteers in 12 Countries. A desk research and a field survey will give to the partnership the capacity to develop the recognition system by experts, youth workers and trainers. The concept of the recognition process comes from the latest novelties in this frame, but it further develops innovative methods, with the pressing needs of feasibility, sustainability and potential extendability to other kind of informal learning: the peer recognition will be the core method to develop a curriculum with its toolkit, handbook and guidelines and the supporting digital tools to blend the educational process with the virtual validation. The direct beneficiaries of the partnership activities will be the 450 piloting volunteers, the involved organization and networks. The 10% of the involved youth will come from fewer opportunities groups, already involved in inclusion and empowerment paths. The project will also involve 250 European local communities, thanks to the piloting voluntary service projects and to the test of their role as education providers. The partnership is expected to launch at European level an open source, free to use, well documented and smooth recognition system - including its digital tools for mobile and desktop devices- so to allow its mainstream adoption by youth organizations involved in volunteering and informal/experiential learning. In the short term, after the piloting phase, the system will be extended to other 100 organizations, and will be available, with the partnership resources, for at least 5 years. This massive adoption will make viable a real improvement towards the desired strategic impacts and objectives.
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