The Citizenship for Change: Empowering volunteer activism was a global awareness raising project encouraging young citizen action for social change. This project has sought to deepen, widen and sustain youth participation in socio-political processes of democratic society addressing social inclusion and equality of opportunity. Impactful change requires that we organise ourselves and take action! Campaigns in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America have through the course of 2014 raised awareness of volunteering and of some of the most pressing social concerns of our times! The Volunteer Activist website was created as a result of the project, in order to offer the seventeen campaigns a common platform to share their work and inspire other volunteers, youth workers and civil society organisations to develop and implement awareness raising campaigns in their host and home countries.

See: http://activist.icye.org/

International Training Seminar in Madrid, Spain, April 2014

Motivated by the desire to raise awareness about volunteering and bring about change in their local environments and communities, 33 young people from 17 countries came together at an international training seminar in April 2014 within the scope of the project “Citizenship for Change: Empowering Volunteer Activism”.

The five-day training seminar was filled with inspiring talks on activism and campaigning, on the Occupy London movement, the social market system – the Mercado Social, and a visit to Asociación Garaldea – an alternative association for people at risk of exclusion. Discussions, exchange of ideas and good practices vis-à-vis campaigning and activism served to prepare the ground for the campaigns in 17 countries in Europe,  Asia, Latin America and Africa. The training seminar came to a close with the presentation of the ideas and plans for the 17 campaigns worldwide.

To those interested in campaigning and activism, we have uploaded some of the reference documents created on the basis of this project:

Quick Guide to Campaigning – Tips to keep in mind, when planning a campaign

Final Activity Report Madrid – Results from the International Training in Madrid

Final Activity Report Peru – Critical examination of the 17 campaigns

Evaluation Conference in Lima, Peru, October 2014

The project came to an official close with an Evaluation Conference in Lima, Peru, in October 2014. In-depth presentations of and discussions on the 17 campaigns demonstrated the diverse range of campaign issues identified by partners as priority for their local networks, cities and countries. A number of the organisations were implementing campaigns for the very first time, and many campaigns networked successfully with local NGOs, created new partnerships, strengthened cooperation with existing partners and reached out to large numbers of people worldwide; youth, local and international volunteers, and the general public. The campaigns were carried out in public spaces through marches, bike rallies, films shows or at music festivals, political events, on the social media, and in the form of workshops and numerous small events in: Austria, Bolivia, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Ghana, Iceland, India, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

The project was to serve as an impetus and an invitation to volunteering NGOs worldwide to take their work a step further by entering the realm of political activism. In this we believe that we have been successful: a number of the participating NGOs have described plans for annual campaigns or continued campaigning work on the prioritized themes. The Volunteer Activist website will remain active even as this project comes to a close, presenting information on the new and continued campaigning work in the international volunteering sector.

Building Capacities and partnerships for youth volunteering programmes between European, African, Asia/Pacific, Caribbean and Latin American Countries

1. EU- African Training Seminar on EVS Capacity and Partnership Building (Dates: 29 March – 04 April 2009 / Venue: Accra, Ghana) / Final activity report
2. EU – ASIA (Different European and Asia/Pacific venues / Timing: between March and October 2009): A 2 month reciprocal job-shadowing between selected ICYE EU members and partner organisations in China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Taiwan and Vietnam)/Final activity report
3. EU- Latin America and the Caribbean Training cum Planning Seminar on “active role of women in Society (Dates: 12-18July 2009 / Venue: Quito, Ecuador)/ Final activity report

The Project “Youth Action for Civil Society” aimed at enhancing the exchange of experience and good practice in the field of youth volunteering as well as the development of sustainable partnership between youth organisations in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific. The project consisted of distinct objectives and strategies to enhance: the training and transfer of know-how around long-term EVS projects between ICYE members and partners in Europe and Africa; on-the-job training and exchange of good practice between Europe, Asia and the Pacific; and training cum planning for partnership development and volunteer exchanges between youth mobility and women organisations in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. The main activities were: a Euro-African training seminar in Africa on EVS programme management followed by a 7-month action plan to pair organisations thru in-country job shadowing, on-the job training and joint EVS activities; 2-month reciprocal job shadowing to enhance partnership building and the capacity of AP youth organisations to plan, implement, report and document long-term EVS projects between Europe and the Asia/Pacific regions; and a Training and Partnership Building Seminar in Latin America on the active role of women in society and to promote EVS exchanges between participating organisations.

Training Course for Youth Workers from EU and LA countries/Antigua, Guatemala /09-15 February 2007

Final Activity Report

ICYE International Office, the Central American Alliance for prevention of youth violence – CCPVJ and APREDE – Asociacion para la prevention del delito, jointly ran this  training course aiming at building up the capacity of youth organisations and of agencies/networks specialized on youth violence prevention and to enable them to cooperate with each others in providing volunteering and non-formal learning opportunities to young people, with particular focus on the European Voluntary Service programme. The programme included inputs by experts, transfer of know-how, discussion groups and workshops as well as a project visit to a youth centre involved in violence prevention campaigns in Guatemala City and an official reception at the Ministry of Culture in the National Palace followed by a field excursion to “La Linea” a neighborhood badly affected by youth gang violence. Participants from both continents expressed their concern regarding the increase of violence particularly in Central America and their motivation to cooperate with each others in providing challenging and meaningful non-formal learning opportunities to socially excluded young people by implementing EVS projects related to this field of work.