EVOLVET (European VOLunteer coordinators Vocation Education and Training) was a European strategic partnership funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission, composed by seven organisations working with development projects for social inclusion and education from Austria, Finland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain. The project, that will take place from the 01/09/2015 to the 31/08/2017, aimed at giving a positive impulsion to the training of volunteer coordinators by providing a standardised tool-kit containing on-the-job training materials for skills and competences commonly demanded to volunteer coordinators across Europe, not only for the management of development projects but also on the concrete education and training of the volunteers taking part on them. Moreover, the project also run transnational training mobilities that made possible to volunteer coordinators from the different partner organisations to take part in common education initiatives about volunteers management embedded within the activities of the project. The creation of such standard pan-European training materials for professional volunteer coordinators will directly contribute to improve the transparency and recognition of their qualifications and competences using also already established systems based on measurable recognitions at transnational level, including those acquired through formal, non-formal and informal learning. Furthermore, the project allowed to identify the skills required by professional volunteer coordinators on development organisations, what made possible to compose an standard curriculum of competences for this professional category that could be use afterwards for both, vocational education and training centers (to develop new learning pathways, methodologies and degrees) and organisations working with projects for local and international development (to detect which competences should be reinforced on their teams and detect those skills needed for future recruitments). According to all of this, EVOLVET was not only an innovative project which main objective was to develop new materials and improve the situation of those professionals working as volunteer coordinators on the development field, but also a necessary initiative to facilitate the transitions of those learning on social education and training centers offering NGOs coordination and management degrees, and the real labor market that will wait them after their graduation. Besides all of this, the project also contributed to create new links between organisations of different countries and sectors working on the same field (local and international development of communities) that have made possible to reinforce the transnational structures of communication and sources to support projects on this field.Project calendar and activities:
- 01/09/2015 - 08/12/2015: Preparation of the project and materials.
- 09/12/2015 - 12/12/2015: First transnational meeting of the project in Logroño, Spain (M1).
- 13/12/2015 - 17/05/2016: Toolkits creation and development on each partner country.
- 18/05/2016 - 21/05/2016: Second transnational meeting of the project in Finland (M2).
- 22/05/2016 - 18/06/2016: Preparation of the transnational training course of trainers for volunteer coordinators in development project (C1).
- 19/06/2016 - 25/06/2016: Transnational training course for trainers of volunteer coordinators in development project (C1).
- 26/06/2016 - 26/11/2016: Testing of the materials for volunteer coordinators through local workshops developed on the seven partner countries of the project.
- 27/11/2016 - 30/11/2016: Third transnational meeting of the project in Poland (M3).
- 01/12/2016 - 25/04/2017: Reception of the feedback of the local workshops and testing. Improvement of the project materials and their final edition.
- 26/04/2017 - 29/04/2017: Fourth transnational meeting of the project in Portugal (M4).
- 30/04/2017 - 21/06/2017: multiplier events to disseminate the results of the project in Austria (E1), Finland (E2), Italy (E3), Poland (E4), Portugal (E5), Slovakia (E6) and Spain (E7).
- 22/06/2017 - 31/08/2017: Collecting results of the project, edition of final materials, dissemination and final reporting.
