C.L.I.C
Coordinating Locally to Initiate More Changes (C.L.I.C) with the European Solidarity Corps is a Key Action 2 Cooperation Partnership project, including 10 partner organisations, under the ERASMUS+ Programme.
Strengthening Youth Volunteering: Support for Mentoring, Personal Projects and Creative Tools
C.L.I.C is a partnership of ten grassroots organisations from nine countries. As project results we share tested solutions and ideas from the field of youth volunteering combining youth workers and volunteers perspectives.
We want to increase the impact and the visibility of the European Solidarity Corps in our communities, while providing young people with a strong educational value along their volunteering projects.
Through materials like CLIC training for mentors, descriptions of diverse personal projects and collection of creative resources such as recipes for successful volunteering, organisations joined forces to make the volunteering experience even more meaningful for all stakeholders..
1. A one-day training on mentoring in the European Solidarity Corps
We are proud to present a complete handbook and website with detailed instructions of a one-day training for mentors. The concept is tested in nine countries and we offer it for anyone to use.
Limited to 8 working hours, on 1 single day, our training intends to offer an easily accessible opportunity to meet, at the local level, and exchange about the topic of European youth volunteering and mentoring.
The training offers the opportunity to various stakeholders, such as youth workers, project managers, and mentors to receive basic references and develop a common understanding of mentoring young European volunteers.
It provides an opportunity to create and foster local networks between mentors and civil society organisations and empowers them to be active at the European level.
Our training is conceived to be easily replicable by LEAD organisations : enabling the LEAD organizations to deliver trainings for stakeholders at their local level will significantly contribute to the quality of support offered to both volunteers and host organizations.
Feel free to use and adapt the training material to your needs, as long as you use it with care and the purpose of enhancing youth empowerment and European values.
More information on Training Handbook and all materials
https://www.nuorisovaihto.fi/allianssi-youth-exchanges/projects-and-exchanges/c-l-i-c/clic-handbook/
2. Best practices/Recipes for successful volunteering
We collected inspiring best practices and transferred them to concrete recipes to support the young people in different phases and aspects of their volunteering projects.
These recipes have all been tested on the field. They are shared by the youth workers, project officers and volunteers from various organizations involved in the coordination of volunteering activities.
They are divided by relevant topics of volunteering :
Daily community life, Inclusion at home, Logistics, Social and cultural life, Support, Sustainable lifestyle
You can enjoy reading them here:
3. Volunteers personal projects stories
Young people bloom up in solidarity. Within the CLIC cooperation partnership, 50 young volunteers from the European Solidarity Corps were able to experiment swift methods of support for their initiatives.
Find here personal project stories that show how they can make a difference, serving the visibility of the European Solidarity Corps programme, while creating impact in their communities.
You can get to know example how Lydia created a thrift guide for volunteers, Sisile organised a workshop to tackle climate anxiety or Busra organised a cultural event in Pori. There are altogether 50 inspiring stories which you can read here:
4. A Unified Approach to Youth Volunteering
CLIC project created a strong and interconnected support system for youth volunteering in Europe.
The project benefits everyone involved: volunteers feel supported and inspired, mentors grow in their roles, and organisations build stronger local and international networks. Most importantly, it contributes to a culture of solidarity where young people are empowered to make a difference in their communities and beyond. The civic society actors can support non-formal learning and wellbeing of young people still looking for their path in uncertain future.
We offer concrete and evidence-based tools to strengthen the ESC programme open to anyone and at the same time we wish to inspire the decision makers see the value of volunteering in midst of political and financial challenges Europe is facing. It is important to offer hope and concrete channels of action for young people in these uncertain times. We can all build a more safe and sustainable Europe together.
How did the project start?
It is quite often that the field workers overlook the personal and social support in their day-to-day work with the volunteers: management of living places; meetings with locals; intercultural learning; activation of peer-support to foster inclusion of YWFO and so on. In many case, the added value of the young volunteers, who bring new ideas and additional resources to their hosting organisations and local communities is underestimated, not enough emphasized and visible. But for the organisation to provide proper support for volunteers, there needs to be additional resources and assistance provided to the organisation. Coordinating organisations at the local and regional levels to disseminate good methods and tools can be a solution to tackle the lack of support for volunteers.
Objectives
One general objective : to strengthen and enhance the key-role that organisations play in order to multiply the impact of the European Solidarity Corps has on inclusion, environmental awareness and dissemination of European values.
4 specific objectives:
- To equip the organisations with new references and tools to support the volunteering experience of the young people on all its dimensions (holistic approach).
- To define new coordinating schemes and support to the involvement of local programme stakeholders.
- To test and to analyse new perspectives of support for the young people in the course of their volunteering.
- To contribute to the forthcoming political discussions on the next programme (beyond 2027), by bringing forth the experiences and tested solutions from field workers.
