Capacity Building Activities Archives - International Cultural Youth Exchange

LIVE-EX Virtual Exchange

March 4, 2024/in Capacity Building Activities, Erasmus+ /by icye icye

Exchange and Cooperation for a Living Earth.

2024-2027

Are you ready to make a difference and connect with peers across Sub-Saharan Africa?

The LIVE-EX project offers you the chance to gain essential digital and soft skills through engaging virtual dialogues and hands-on community actions. Focused on digital inclusion and climate justice, LIVE-EX empowers you to become a global advocate for change. Join us to fight climate crisis, enhance your employability by building your skills, engage in lasting friendships, and drive meaningful impact in your community.

About the project:

LIVE-EX is an Erasmus+ funded Virtual Exchange project for the period 2024-2027, collaborating with 2 European and 8 partners from Sub-Saharan Africa. The project is a multi-network, transcontinental collaboration, which aims to foster youth engagement and global cooperation for social and climate justice by supporting digital inclusion among IVS organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa. This collaborative effort is designed to offer young people access to high-quality virtual intercultural exchanges, helping them build skills, gain critical thinking, and engage in environmental and social causes at a global level.

LIVE-EX is part of the Living Earth Campaign. If you would like to know more about Living Earth click here: https://ccivs.org/livingearth/

Key Objectives:

LIVE-EX stands for Living Earth Exchange, a project that strives to address the digital and environmental challenges faced by young people in Sub-Saharan Africa. The primary aims and objectives of the project include:

Digital Inclusion: To provide young people with the digital skills and access necessary to participate fully in today’s interconnected world. This includes overcoming barriers such as inadequate ICT infrastructure and high costs of internet services.
Climate Justice: To educate and engage youth on the impacts of climate colonialism and to empower them to advocate for climate justice. The project focuses on creating awareness and driving actions that contribute to sustainable and equitable environmental practices.
Capacity Building: To enhance the capabilities of youth organizations in the region, enabling them to support and mentor young people effectively. This includes training youth workers in virtual volunteering and hybrid project management.
Intercultural Dialogue: To foster intercultural understanding and cooperation among young people from different backgrounds through virtual exchanges and collaborative community actions.
Youth Empowerment: To support young people in developing critical thinking skills, active citizenship, and global competence, ultimately improving their employability and ability to contribute to their communities.

Key Activities:

Blended training for mentors: A two-month program focused on mentoring and peer supervision to build capacity for conducting virtual exchanges.
Earth Advocacy Mentorship Virtual Exchange: Four cohorts designed to support youth involvement in climate justice activism.
Advocacy actions: Online and local community actions to spread awareness and engage young people in advocacy for climate and social justice.
Monitoring and Evaluation: Ongoing assessment to measure the impact of the project and ensure continuous improvement.
Virtual dialogues: Online events aimed at disseminating project results, discussing issues related to intercultural exchange, and promoting youth empowerment.
Youth advisory roles: Encouraging young people to take part in decision-making processes within major IVS networks.

Expected Outputs:

Good practices map: A resource to share successful models and methodologies used in virtual exchanges.
Minimal standards for virtual volunteering: Guidelines to ensure quality and inclusivity in virtual volunteer experiences.
Mentorship curriculum: A comprehensive curriculum and toolkit designed to train youth workers and mentors in conducting effective virtual exchanges.
Youth Manual: A toolkit to support the young activists in their action on behalf of life on Earth.
Online course: A digital learning platform providing youth with skills and knowledge related to digital inclusion, intercultural communication, and climate advocacy.
Newsletters: Regular updates to keep stakeholders informed about progress and outcomes.

Direct Benefits:

2000 virtual exchange participants (pax): Young people engaged in virtual exchange programs, developing skills and understanding of global issues.
25 youth workers: Individuals trained to support and facilitate virtual exchanges in their local contexts.
10 IVS organisations: Organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa receiving direct support and involvement in the project.
32 local communities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Communities benefiting from youth-driven actions and knowledge sharing.

Indirect Benefits:

10,000 young volunteers: Youth across the network who gain indirect exposure to the project’s outcomes.
500 youth workers: Additional youth workers benefiting from shared resources and best practices.
200 IVS organisations: A broader network of organisations receiving knowledge and support from the initiative.
Hosting communities in 96 countries: Communities globally, benefitting from the increased participation and advocacy actions driven by the project.

By empowering young people, particularly from underrepresented and vulnerable communities, the Live-X Project strengthens the environmental movement with strong mentorship, diverse participation, and youth-led advocacy for climate justice.

Our Partners:

The partners bring a wealth of experience in international voluntary service and community development. The consortium includes the following countries; if you are from one of these countries, please contact the organisations to find out about how you can become involved!

Kenya: International Cultural Youth Exchange (ICYE Kenya): Runs virtual exchange programs and places volunteers in community projects, fostering intercultural interactions.

Malawi: Community Forum (COFO): Actively involved in virtual exchanges and climate change advocacy, promoting youth engagement and education.

Mozambique: Associacao Juvenil Para o Desenvolvimento do Voluntariado em Moçambique (AJUDE): Works on digital access and intercultural exchange, promoting environmental awareness among local youth.

Nigeria: International Christian Youth Exchange (ICYE Nigeria): Engaged in virtual exchanges and Erasmus+ projects, focusing on diversity, equality, and sustainable development.

South Africa: South Africa Volunteer Work Camp Association (SAVWA): Focuses on the inclusion of disadvantaged communities and environmental actions, including managing community garden projects.

Tanzania: United Planet Tanzania (ICYE Tanzania): Introduced virtual exchange programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on various volunteer tasks, including marketing and social media.

Togo: Astovot : l’Asociation Togolaise des Volontaires au Travail: Promotes peace and improved living conditions through initiatives in education, environment, socioculture, and health.

Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe Workcamps Association (ZWA): A leading organization in the African volunteer network, with strong local youth engagement and virtual exchange experience.

Decolonise IVS!

November 10, 2022/in Capacity Building Activities, Erasmus+ /by icye

Youth Work Can Unite: International Volunteering to Enhance Solidarity and Fight Nationalism

August 24, 2022/in Capacity Building Activities, Erasmus+ /by icye

Action 3.2 – “Citizenship for change: Empowering volunteer activism”

September 20, 2014/in Capacity Building Activities /by icye

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.

Action 4.3 – “Training on Cross Cultural Volunteering Impact”

April 25, 2013/in Capacity Building Activities /by icye

The “Training on Cross-Cultural Volunteering Impact” took place in London, UK, from April 15 – 22, 2013 and aimed at training and empowering youth workers to support and carry out impact assessment by identifying and developing practical and easy to use research methodology that is best suited to test the impact of long-term international volunteering.

26 youth workers from Austria, Germany, France, Iceland, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, UK and Switzerland participated in the impact training in London, United Kingdom.

The training commenced with a session on intercultural learning and the questioning of representation practices in general and in the mass media. It focused thereafter on the why and what of research and impact assessment, (re)defining volunteering and clearly outlining the need for impact assessment, leading to elaborating the key research aims, methods that can be used (qualitative and quantitative), research tools that already exist within ICYE and the participating host organisations, as well as identifying methods and tools that best suit the field of long-term international volunteering. As the last phase, participants developed methods (questionnaires for surveys and for focus groups) for testing impact of long-term international volunteering. These tools and methods were tested after the training by four organisations (Italy, Denmark, Austria and Finland) through sample assessments they undertook with long-term volunteers and host organisations in their respective countries. The training and overall project was guided by the research head of the Institute of Volunteering Research (IVR), UK.

In October 2013, the Steering Group of this project and one representative of each organisation conducting the sample assessment (from Austria Denmark, Finland and Italy) will meet for a final Evaluation Meeting in Helsinki, Finland, to examine the results of the training and sample assessments. A toolkit with guidelines and methods for impact assessment in the field of long-term international voluntary service will be developed and finalised during the Evaluation Meeting.

Youth Action for Civil Society

October 7, 2009/in Capacity Building Activities /by icye

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

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.

Promoting Interethnic Dialogue and Intercultural Learning

July 6, 2008/in Capacity Building Activities /by icye

Training for EVS sending and host organizations in EU, African and Asian countries

Within the larger framework of the “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008, the objective of the training programme “Promoting Interethnic Dialogue and Intercultural Learning – Training for EVS sending and host organisations in EU, African and Asian countries”, was to enhance the skills of staff members, co-workers, mentors and project supervisors of EVS sending and receiving organisations by sensitising them to the importance of promoting cultural diversity and fostering intercultural learning at every stage of the EVS project. This objective was achieved by introducing trainers and youth workers to diversity-thematic and to intercultural learning methods. A group of experienced trainers from the 3 continents developed training modules based on the specific country and cultural context. This training project enhanced the skills of the participants giving them fresh inputs, which will reinvigorate their work with youth towards achieving greater understanding and respect within a globalising world. At the end of the project, we believe that both participants and trainers have deepened their knowledge and experience in the field of intercultural learning and have gained a better understanding of the cultural, social and political dynamics to be considered in working with volunteers from different cultures and countries, particularly between the EU, African and Asian countries. Furthermore, the tools and methods introduced during the trainings will give participants the expertise to infuse intercultural learning concepts in their own work with youth, thus functioning as multipliers.

Youth United Against Violence

February 16, 2007/in Capacity Building Activities /by icye

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.

Training Course for youth workers in EU and SEE countries

December 20, 2006/in Capacity Building Activities /by icye

Training course for youth workers in EU and SEE countries/Chisinau, Moldova/07-13 December 2006

The aims of this training were twofold: on one hand to enable partner organisations in EU and in EECA countries to improve the quality of youth mobility activities, especially in relation to the management of volunteers under the EVS programme scheme, and on the other to share knowledge and expertise on how to recruit, retain and recognize volunteers within their distinct national/local structures and contexts. The programme included inputs by experts, transfer of know-how, discussion groups and workshops as well as project visits to two EVS host organisations: a child care centre (Small Group Home) and to a refugee centre (Main Direction of Refugees), providing first hand information by the respective volunteers and hosts and multiple learning opportunities for the participants

Exploring the potential of volunteers in HIV and AIDS education and prevention

September 29, 2006/in Capacity Building Activities /by icye

Training course for youth workers in EU and SEE countries/Birmingham, United Kingdom/23-29 September 2006

ICYE International Office, Freshwinds and ICYE UK jointly ran a training course for youth workers in the EU and SEE countries from 23rd September to 29th September 2006 at Freshwinds Birmingham headquarters. The course was entitled – Exploring the potential of volunteers in HIV and AIDS education and prevention. It brought together youth workers of ICYE member and partner organisations as well as representatives of HIV/AIDS prevention and care agencies to prepare them for their tasks in an upcoming EU-SEE multilateral EVS project on HIV and AIDS as well as to empower them to network and to develop partnerships around innovative projects. The Birmingham TC was particularly successful in developing new – and strenghthening the existing – partnerships between the present EU and SEE organisations which have agreed on a number of concrete follow-up activities.